UK radio broke rules in announcing king’s death: watchdog

A community radio station breached the rules after accidentally announcing the death of King Charles III in a May broadcast, a UK watchdog said on Monday.

Radio Caroline, a former pirate radio that now mostly plays rock music, apologized in May after airing messages falsely announcing the monarch’s death.

One of the messages had said: “We have suspended our normal programmes until further notice as a mark of respect following the passing of His Majesty King Charles III.”

The national anthem was then played, followed by around 16 minutes of silence before the regular programme resumed.

The presenter apologized 30 minutes after the messages were initially triggered, Ofcom said.

The regulator, which received two complaints about the broadcast, said the “very significant inaccuracy” and the “considerable length of time” taken to acknowledge the error breached two of its rules.

One requires news reports to be accurate and impartial.

The other requires significant mistakes to be acknowledged and corrected on air promptly.

Radio Caroline told Ofcom the error occurred when a member of staff accessed sound files pre-recorded in the event of the monarch’s death while carrying out maintenance on the studio computer, as the programme was being streamed remotely.

The staff member played the files “out of curiosity”, which stopped the stream from the presenter’s remote location and broadcast the files on air.

The person then reportedly “panicked and left the premises” after realizing what had happened, according to the Ofcom statement.

Radio Caroline said the remote presenter “would not realize that they had gone ‘off-air’ unless they were monitoring their output via an internet monitor.”

The presenter, believing they were still on air, was not actively monitoring their phone and did not immediately respond to calls from people at the station who had noticed the error, the report said.

The station said the person who played the files had been “reprimanded” and had “apologised.”

It added the pre-recorded files had now been removed from the studio computer.