
When Queen Elizabeth II passed away on September 8, 2022, there can’t have been many people in the UK who hadn’t heard about it within hours of her death. The media was on high alert from around midday, when an announcement from Buckingham Palace made clear that the monarch’s health was under threat.
The BBC replaced normal programming with rolling news coverage. And as soon as the announcement of the Queen’s death was posted on the gates of Buckingham Palace, just before 6.30pm, news presenters interrupted programmes across the board to inform the public. The news, after all, is at our fingertips 24/7.