News media apologies for giant roaring: declared queen death

It can go quickly in the news stream, and sometimes a little too fast. Small errors happen, but in this case you can safely say that VG made a huge roar.

The Norwegian newspaper and the media group VG had to be true as a technical error during a live broadcast led to a shocking and wrong information: that Queen Sonja was dead.

The message only reached visible a few seconds on screen, but nevertheless created immediate confusion and turmoil among viewers.

The error occurred during a TV transmission on Tuesday, April 22 at 1 pm. The wrong information emerged as a subtitle to a completely different news, and although the error was quickly corrected, it had already aroused attention. VG has since regretted the episode and contacted the royal house to apologize.

« It is a very unfortunate mistake and we are very sad about the incident. We have apologized directly to the castle and we apologize to our viewers, » says news editor Tora Bakke Handlykken.

The VG on their website

The reason for the misunderstanding was an internal error in the system, and VG is now in the process of digging the incident and tightening up its procedures.

According to the handgun, that kind of thing should not happen and the initiative has already been taken to ensure that it does not repeat itself.

The error occurred shortly after Queen Sonja was discharged from Rikshospitalet, where she had been hospitalized the night before.

Although the situation was quickly clarified, the episode illustrates how sensitive it is to work with royal issues in real time and how important it is that the facts are before the send button is activated.