The Queen’s death sparked a media boom in business for decades

New York – When the word came Queen Elizabeth II On the verge of her death, life arose in media organizations around the world, sending reporters to a royal castle in Scotland, and exposing coverage plans that had been in the works for decades.

At the age of 96, the Queen’s death was no surprise. still British royal succession is an informational event on steroids that will culminate in Monday’s live coverage of Westminster Abbey’s funeral services.

“It’s something I’ve always feared, anticipated and worried about,” said Deb Thompson, assistant director of the London bureau of CBS News in the US, recalling nights I spent obsessed with details.

So far, things have gone smoothly and she was horrified by the scene.

But woe to those who did not plan for the future.

The director of the UK Foreign Press Association said the organization had been inundated with requests for accreditation from television and radio broadcasters around the world. The association is trying to help them navigate government and royal protocols.

“You’d think royal weddings were maxed out, but no,” said director Deborah Bonetti. “It’s a tsunami of people who have no idea what to do in order to broadcast these facts from London.”

Even accredited journalists are fighting for positions, she said, “so if you’re just traveling…you’re not likely to get a job.”

Within Britain, well-rehearsed coverage of remembrance and ceremonial events was faulty, said Stephen Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster. Critical thinking about the life of the queen or the role of the monarchy in modern society – which has been covered around the world – has been almost completely left out on social media, he said.

In a roundabout of gigs, the New York Times has come under fire in Britain for an article that talked about the “heavy” price of a royal funeral being paid by state money at a time when many Britons are hurting financially.

There are no depths to which @nytimes will not bow in their anti-British propaganda, journalist Andrew Neale, former editor of the London Sunday Times, said on Twitter.

In the United States, coverage has mostly focused on afternoon lapseAnd the official servicessaid Marilyn Koenig, who runs the blog Royal Musings from her home in Virginia.

“It was respectful,” she said. “I will not use the term reverence. We have to remember that the British monarch is a huge part of our history and heritage.”

Mourners who sought to pay their final tributes to the Queen while her coffin lay in state this week met a throng of reporters, microphones and video cameras as they waited to enter Westminster Hall and again as they departed.

Why did they come? What did this moment mean to them? How did you feel when you saw the coffin? Reporters asked to check the wristbands of people in line to see how many were waiting.

On Thursday, the media’s desire to show as many mourners as possible passing by the king’s coffin contrasts with the palace’s conscious desire to rule in dignity and decency.

The palace issued a list of rules for video coverage, which included, for example, that the royal family not be depicted with “obvious signs of malaise” or “any inappropriate behavior” by members of the public or otherwise.

When a ceremony guard fainted next to the Queen’s coffin, the BBC cut off its live broadcast, and the use of video showing what had happened was banned, although still images appeared on newspaper websites.

Many news organizations have long-term agreements about where their journalists will be placed at signed events. For example, NBC News uses the same website it used to cover King Charles III’s wedding to Diana and Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton.

“The British are pomp and unparalleled,” said Tom Mazzarelli, executive producer of NBC’s “Today” in the US.

American broadcasters were all in the Queen’s coverage, too. Television networks are sending their biggest news stars to provide coverage of Monday’s funeral: Robin Roberts and David Muir of ABC News; Savannah Guthrie, Lester Holt and Hoda Kotb of NBC; Gail King and Nora O’Donnell of CBS.

Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997 saw a huge audience: 33 million in the United States alone on Saturday morning.

Even without royalty, the funerals of prominent figures symbolize the end of an era and are often a major television attraction. The Nielsen Company said the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan, at its peak in 2004, had 35 million viewers.

The Queen’s death has received much coverage elsewhere in the world, often dictated or complicated by Britain’s relations with the countries in which it was exhibited.

In Hong Kong, the former British colony that was handed over to China in 1997, most of the local media reported on the British festivities. But some TV channels were wary of reporting the city’s appreciation for the Queen.

Now TV has edited a Facebook post and news report that showed Hong Kong residents leaving flowers at the British Consulate to remove an interview with a resident who said the long line of people waiting to pay respects to the Queen were “showing what people want”.

Local media reported that the pro-Beijing news chief of Now TV had ordered the changes to be made. The network did not provide an explanation for this.

Extensive coverage of the queen’s death quickly faded in India, once the largest British colony. For older residents, the British royal family is a painful part of history, but for most Indians they are just another famous family.

In Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad considers Britain part of a coalition that funds rebels in the country’s 11-year conflict, state television has paid little attention to the news.

Co-hosts of major morning television shows in Australia, a constitutional monarchy in which the Queen was sovereign, traveled to London to cover the events. Regular guests of the programs had to wear dark clothes.

Widespread coverage in Japan has often been met with parallels with plans for the controversial state funeral later this month for assassinated former leader Shinzo Abe.

British festive events are “the catnip of television networks,” said Mark Lukasievic, veteran executive director of American Network and now dean of the School of Communications at Hofstra University.

After more than a week, they had limits, said Barnett, the British professor.

“It’s gotten to the point where a lot of people are thinking, ‘We’ve had enough now,'” he said.

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Sylvia Hoy and Samia Clapp and Jill Lawless from London; Basem Marwa from Beirut, Lebanon. Mari Yamaguchi from Tokyo, Japan; Zen Soo from Hong Kong; Krutika Pathy from New Delhi, India; Rod McGurk from Canberra, Australia contributed to this report.

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Follow the Associated Press’ coverage of Queen Elizabeth II on https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.

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