Broadcasters in the UK are battling with the royal family over control of Queen Elizabeth’s commemorations. Buckingham Palace said that broadcasters will only be allowed to keep one hour of footage from the 10-day mourning period for future use.
The Royal Family gave broadcasters until Monday to produce one-hour compilations of clips they would like to keep, and it will decide whether to remove some of the footage included. After the process is complete, most of the footage will be removed from circulation.
According to people familiar with the issue, as reported by The Guardian, broadcasters will only be allowed to keep 12 minutes of footage from the committal service at Windsor castle, 12 minutes from the funeral service at Westminster Abbey, and only a few minutes from the various vigils that took place while the queen’s coffin lay at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh and Westminster Hall in London.
The royal family had already vetoed video clips from the queen’s memorial services and banned them from being used on social media and in news reports.
“It’s completely illogical and doesn’t make sense,” said one journalist with knowledge of the negotiations. “We’re furious that they’re trying to restrict how people can relive sombre but important historic events.”
Broadcasters were also told that the palace will veto footage from the King Charles III’s accession council, a lengthy and historically significant event where the new monarch was officially proclaimed. Broadcasters will only be allowed to keep 12 minutes from the event. Longer video clips will need the approval of the palace.
“Once it’s been transmitted, once we recorded in our own homes and our own video recorders and suddenly we’re being told that certain sequences didn’t happen, we can’t show them again and it’s just unrealistic,” said Stewart Purvis, a former editor at ITN.
“There’s no other way of interpreting that than effectively not censorship but basically self-censorship. It was wonderful coverage and I think the palace will reflect that they have made a mistake,” he added.
