Last but not least: Here the boss apologizes

A star photographer (or photo goddess) takes a portrait of the Queen, the Queen shoots the star photographer in the mouth, the TV station twists the former's words around in her mouth and snips the truth, whereupon the TV station has to apologize to the Queen and the photo goddess. This happens when Annie Leibovitz photographs the Queen and the BBC reports on it. For most television stations, it would be everyday life. Or even a successful teaser. For the (former) super-uber-mega prestige broadcaster BBC, the almost unattainable benchmark for journalists around the world, it is, as more secular media around the world happily report, only one thing: embarrassing. In Corpus Delicti, a promotional clip for a documentary broadcast several times on the BBC, clever editing is used to suggest that the Queen stormed out of the photo shoot with American photographer Annie Leibovitz - at least as noble as the Queen in her field and as supernatural as the BBC - in a rage and in full regalia. Leibovitz had enraged the Queen by demanding that she remove her crown. Senior representatives of the broadcaster had to concede on Thursday that this was not quite true. Sorry. The Queen had not broken off the photo session prematurely, but had denied the photographer's well-intentioned suggestion in an unusually brusque manner and had not even let her finish the sentence. Nobody knows exactly why the Queen left the room so angrily after her work was done. The critics know best what the pictures are like, but they are not unanimous: while a columnist for the New York Times described the Queen as having the personality of a wooden figure, a British colleague was relieved that Leibovitz, who is known for her provocative poses, portrayed the Queen in a classic way and not "in the bathtub or break-dancing".