Apparently the BBC can be guilty of a little yellow journalism, according to an article by Reuters. On Thursday, the UK television giant apologized to Queen Elizabeth for the way they edited a trailer for their upcoming documentary “A year with the Queen.” The trailer shows a scene between famed photographer Annie Leibovitz and Queen Elizabeth for a Vanity Fair shoot. Annie Leibovitz says to the queen, “I think it will look better without the crown because the garter robe is so…” to which the queen responds, “Less dressy, what do you think this is?” Then appears to storm off. She is then shown walking through a hallway saying, “I’m not changing anything. I’ve had enough dressing like this thank you very much.”

In this trailer there is a sequence that implies that the Queen left a sitting prematurely. This was not the case and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented,” it said in a statement.

“The BBC would like to apologize to both the Queen and Annie Leibovitz for any upset this may have caused.”

[From the BBC]

Apparently Annie Leibovitz was about to say that the robe was so extraordinary – though how anyone knows what she was about to say I have no clue. The point being that it was not meant as an insult, or to make the queen look less formal. It was simply a suggestion that she take off the crown so the focus would be on the robe. While she did respond frostily, Queen Elizabeth did not storm out of the room as the footage suggests. The scene were she comments on refusing to change again took place before the shoot, while she was walking to meet Annie Leibovitz. She’d obviously just tried on several outfits. However it was cropped to make it appear that her comments came after the altercation. Either way, Leibovitz clearly won, as in the layout Queen Elizabeth appears both with and without her crown.

Either way it sounds like the queen was being uptight… it’s just the level of uptightness that we’re debating here. Not that she’s known for being a particularly relaxed sort. The story was erroneously reported all over the place on Tuesday and Wednesday, making the queen sound pretty high strung. The BBC issued its correction on Thursday.