News embargoes for deaths

Actually the Queen Mother died at about 3:15pm, the news was embargoed for about two and a half hours. You make it sound like she had died days previously.



Think you'll find a typical news outlet knows far more at any point about hundreds of things than they ever let on. Think about undercover investigations for example and the "Sky/BBC/ITV Exclusives".

Right, but investigations are invariably about long-term trends rather than immediate breaking news.

It's only ever going to be for a couple of hours at most - as has been said already, it gives the family (who are usually non-public figures) a bit of space to tell who needs to know so they don't find out from TV/radio/social media (and in the Wogan/Peel cases, allows the BBC press office a bit of room to give the family some practical help and get some tributes from the director general, etc).

If someone's been a cherished entertainer for decades, the least a news organisation - particularly one that's part of the broadcaster that's benefited from their talents for years - can do is respect their family's wishes for an hour or so.

Here's a classic example of how to break the death (from illness) of a major figure -- immediately, with no embargoes and no official protocol, but still with great dignity:

As a pres fan, I much preferred the titles and set of this era of Auntie's Bloomers.

Seems you got to see a little more of TVC in a slightly earlier version.

You seem very frustrated over minimal delays regarding deaths of famous people. If it was an ongoing event like a terrorist attack, that news needs to be delivered as soon as possible for numerous reasons, such as people who may be in or travelling to the area where the event is taking place or if loved ones are involved. The death of a person is a finite event. Once it happens, it's happened. There is no direct reason for somebody who isn't family or a friend to learn about it as soon as possible unless one had a weird fetish for such a thing. And because there is no urgency to deliver the news as there would be with a terrorist attack, embargoes can be put in place to not only allow news outlets to prepare a decent and respectable response but also, as others have said, allow those close to the deceased time to learn the news from each other and not from Twitter.

In 1952, it is alleged, the present day Queen didn't learn about the death of her father for the best part of at least 12 hours after it happened. Mind you the fact she was in Kenya at the time may have had something to do with it - long before the days of extended television, mobile phones and the like.

These days of course, Charles won't have such a long wait, unless he happens to be in the middle of nowhere...

Different era, I know, but wouldn't it have been better for that phone call to have been conducted either off the air by someone else, or during a commercial break… there's a bit in that clip where the viewer is left in silence for 15 seconds.

Fair enough, but why am I "frustrated"? Surely one of the purposes of an internet forum is the exchange of differing views. I just happen to think that news organizations should be as open as possible and ready to pass on breaking news items -- whatever they may be -- as soon as they are able to verify then. You believe an exception needs to be made in case of death announcements. I would argue that both these views are fundamentally legitimate, and that neither implies some deep-seated frustration -- or any other underlying psychological condition.

Why ever would you think that?

It was about 4 hours:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/08/queen-elizabeth-treetops-kenya

In England, meanwhile, "Hyde Park Corner" was under way, the coded plan for arrangements surrounding the death of the king. At No 10, Winston Churchill was informed at once that the king had died in his sleep at Sandringham, but it was four hours before word reached the princess. A telegram to Government House in Nairobi could not be decoded because the keys to the safe holding the codebook were unavailable.

At lunchtime the editor of the East African Standard telephoned the princess's secretary, Martin Charteris, at the Outspan to ask if the teleprinter reports were true. Shocked, Charteris contacted Sagana, where Prince Philip reacted as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt.

Rallying swiftly, he took his 25-year-old wife for a walk in the garden where, at 2.45pm on 6 February, he told her that her father was dead and she was now Queen and head of the Commonwealth.

Why wouldn't I? Isn't that what news is all about?