“We offer our apologies to the people concerned and to you who follow and trust us”
A French radio station has had to issue an apology after they accidentally published obituaries for around 100 famous people, ranging from the Queen to Sir Alex Ferguson.
France’s RFI public radio misinformed their audience about the passing of numerous very-much-still-alive high-profile figures due to a technical problem.
The Guardian reports that the obituary posted about the Queen Elizabeth’s death said: “The United Kingdom awoke an orphan this morning. Buckingham Palace officially announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen, who died of …, turned 94 on 21 April 2020.”
As well as Her Majesty and the legendary Manchester United manager, actors Clint Eastwood, Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot as well as Yoko Ono were all included in the list of obituaries.
The posts were published on RFI’s website as well as Google, Yahoo! and MSN before someone noticed the mistake and they were swiftly removed.
🔴 Un problème technique a entraîné la publication de nombreuses nécrologies sur notre site.
Nous sommes mobilisés pour rectifier ce bug majeur et présentons nos excuses aux personnes concernées ainsi qu'à vous qui nous suivez et nous faites confiance.— RFI (@RFI) November 16, 2020
The station blamed the mistake on a bug in their system and said they were fixing the issue.
They took to Twitter to release a statement apologising for the incident, saying: “We offer our apologies to the people concerned and to you who follow and trust us. We are mobilising to rectify this major bug.”
The RFI also declared Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former US President Jimmy Carter, Cuban leader Raul Castro all dead.
Another name that made an appearance was France’s own business mogul Bernard Tapie. This wasn’t the first time that this has happened to him, as his death has been reported at least twice before by other news sites.
