now been pulled from circulation. at the moment, those picture agencies are unable to say, "hand on heart, we think this image is totally genuine." 0k, well... holly hunter, there... ..it's a disaster! there's a lot to unpack there. there is. how did a social media post celebrating mother's day cause a royal public relations crisis... great picture. three lovely children smiling at the camera and kate looking really well. and then suddenly it all went pear—shaped. there are various clues that indicate it's been edited or changed in some way. ..and fuel allegations of fake news and conspiracy theories... the more outlandish, the wilder the conspiracy theory, the more traction it's going to get. ..and send social media meme accounts into overdrive? the traditional press has been quite respectful, quite restrained. out there in the wilds of social media, the opposite is true. this is the story of how the princess of wales broke the internet, sparking big questions of trust and transparency in an age of disinformation.

this story spiralled rapidly, so let's start at the beginning. what i reckon will be the headlines everywhere in the next few hours is this picture we can show you. it's just been released by the royal family showing the princess of wales and her children for mother's day, after weeks of frenzied speculation about her health and her whereabouts. on the morning of sunday 10th march 2024, the prince and princess of wales — william and kate — posted a photo to their social media accounts, including instagram and x, saying the words, "thank you for your kind wishes and "continued support over the last two months. "wishing everyone a happy mother's day." the message was signed "c" for catherine, and the picture was credited to william, the prince of wales.

the idea, i think, was to allay the concerns that people have had on social media and so on about kate's health. and she's not been seen in public since christmas, apart from a paparazzi shot that didn't appear in this country. and so there was great expectation that, you know, the photograph would help the situation, that we would see kate's return to health and that everything's fine in the world of the royal family and the prince and princess of wales. this was the first official photo of the princess of wales since the palace announced she'd undergone abdominal surgery almost two months earlier. ijust want to bring you some breaking news from kensington palace. this has been issued just in the last minute. her royal highness, the princess of wales — that's catherine, the princess of wales — was admitted to the london clinic yesterday for planned abdominal surgery. it was supposed to reassure the public about the wellbeing of the princess. people just love a conspiracy theory, and so they start to speculate if somebody's been out of the limelight

for quite a while. i'd just like to have an answer to all the questions that most people are wondering, "what's going on?" . i think it's all been massively blown out of proportion. i don't think it's a big deal, and i think it shouldn't take up nearly as much media time as it does when there's much more important things happening. i think this photograph put out on mother's day was an attempt to quell the rumours about the whereabouts and the wellbeing of catherine, princess of wales. as we know, injanuary she had a serious operation. we don't know exactly what for, but it was such that she had to spend two weeks in hospital, and then we were told that she would spend several months in recuperation. initially, it had the desired effect — dominating the next day's front pages, most of which had gone to print the night before. i think it was a very simple pr move to say that "william took it. "look, everything's happy in every part of life. "we're all doing well." it was a post intended to mark mother's day against a background in which it would inevitably be seen as an attempt to stop conspiracy theories and speculation about catherine, but it had the opposite effect.

rumours, speculation and conspiracy theories went into overdrive. on the evening that the picture was posted, the associated press, one of the international news media agencies that distributed the photo, issued a kill notification — a media industry term used to describe retraction of an image from circulation and use by media outlets. ap said that "the source has manipulated the image", the source being the prince and princess of wales. so when a photograph . is submitted to all these various press agencies, - they get passed around very, very quickly to be distributed to all the magazines, - tv news programmes — - all the different media teams. and so, if something - is found to be manipulated, what they have to do is to give this — it sounds very severe — i a kill notice. that instantly tells everybody that this must absolutely be i stopped being distributed because something is - wrong with it. and that could be . the caption is wrong. it could be wrongly dated

in terms of the date, - the place, the location. it could be misinformation. but manipulation is something which cannot go through - the press agencies. so, marianna, you look at images all the time and analyse them in a lot of detail. talk us through what's actually problematic about this picture. ok, so here we have a very large version of the image that sparked a lot of controversy. and there's no suggestion or evidence that it was generated using ai, that it's totally false. but instead, there are various clues that indicate it's been edited or changed in some way. so the first really obvious one that a lot of people spotted was princess charlotte's sleeve that's here. there's a kind of chunk missing on her left cardigan sleeve, which is really consistent with a photo having been edited. the second one is here, on the princess of wales' zip. you can see that the zip doesn't really fully align with the bit below, and that again is consistent with it having been edited in some way. and then another kind of quite obvious one is how blurry this hand is on prince louis' side. so if you spend a fair bit

of time, there are a few other clues as well. you can quite easily see that this was edited. we analysed the data attached to the image that was shared with the different press agencies, and what that tells us is that, actually, the image was edited twice using software on a computer. so, again, it kind of all matches up. but we haven't been able to analyse the original image because kensington palace haven't shared that. the kill notifications didn't stop with ap. reuters said it also had withdrawn the image following a post—publication review. french media agency afp then issued a mandatory kill notice. they were followed by getty images and then the press association. it is really unusual. there have been claims of some examples in the past, but this is really, really unusual. and also, i think it's the sudden fall from grace, from a picture that was meant to be a nice, friendly family picture. suddenly, it's sort of attacked by these very aggressive—looking kill notices. major news agencies, specifically the associated press and reuters, pulled a photo released today by kensington palace over concerns that it may have been manipulated.

it's very rare, but they have j put in new rules very late... ..like recently, withi everything going on, with wars and so on. so they're being a lot hotter on what can and can't get i through. i mean, it's such a severe thing to get a kill notice, i and i think it's unfortunate i the royal family were the first big names to get struck by it, with everything else - going on with them. i think it's unprecedented to do it this way round. i mean, ithink the royal family have, in the past, stopped photographs that have been taken by the paparazzi or illegally. so it's usually the palace that's put the block on the agencies releasing certain photographs, but this is the other way round. the palace have supplied a photograph and the agencies have said no — presumably because of that, because they're alarmed at the number of inconsistencies on the photograph and editing. in a way, this was intended to be a picture to kill off the rumours. but instead, what's happened is that the media has actually killed off this picture.

meanwhile, on instagram and other social media platforms, users commented on what they thought were efforts to edit the photograph, with some sharing conspiracy theories. the world of social media is a hungry beast, and news doesn't like a vacuum, and it was filled with all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories about where she was and how she was, and was she really ill, what was happening? i don't think anybody could avoid, if you use social media, coming across this in some way, and that's why it's been quite important to explain now that the reason it's really taken off is because of these kinds of conspiracy theories. and it's notjust conspiracy theories. like, some of it is very speculative, but i think a lot of people want to know the details. they want to understand more. they don't understand what's going on. there are various things that made them concerned or worried orjust a bit nosy. people online also made light of what news agencies took very seriously, turning the incident into an unending stream of memes. just in — the princess of wales is apologising over the royal

family photo that several news agencies pulled because it appeared to have been manipulated. little more than 2a hours after the original photo had been posted, the princess of wales posted an apology on social media. i was quite pleased that they dealt with it straight away, that a statement was issued from kate admitting — and it wasjust the right tone, i think — she admitted, "i'm an amateur photographer "and i did what a lot of people do, a bit of photo editing." and she didn't say she made a hash of it, but she implied that she, you know, perhaps should have left it to the professionals. oh, no. you're going to have to edit that... - what did you think of their response to the whole thing? well, i think there was a sort of howling gale of media interest in the story that morning. there had to be a response. they couldn't not say something.

and, in a way, i think we've slightly overlooked how dramatic that was, because here was a very senior royal publicly apologising for something that they'd done. that's really unusual in itself. i think also people will have noticed that it was catherine who signed it with a "c" dot, you know, rather than it being a formal princess of wales thing, and she took responsibility. very nice to see you guys. the evening after the post, prince william spoke at a public event but made no mention of the incident that had dominated the headlines the previous 2a hours. i think where they haven'tl shown the original photo — and seem to be refusing to do so, it makes you wonder, - like, what is being hidden from it? i how edited was this? the message from the palace was that we're not going to see the original photograph, and i suspect they'll stick to that, because otherwise people will be poring over it and seeing what's changed from that original picture and the one that was published. it'd be like the biggest game of spot the difference ever, wouldn't it, if we got the original and the edited? there would be pages and pages of arrows pointing at strange haircuts and missing fringes

and stripes onjumpers. i think they won't go further than that unless they're forced to by other events, such as someone else possibly leaking the picture. but why did a photograph that had potential to end the speculation about the princess's health end up fuelling it? it was an attempt to stop these sort of crazy rumours. but, in fact, because of the problems with the authenticity and questions about whether it had been manipulated, it's actually had the opposite effect. it's set a whole new world of crazy claims and conspiracy theories running across social media and across the front pages, too. and it's an extraordinary... i suppose, what had been a sensible attempt to try and show how she was has, in fact, raised a whole load of other questions which are even harder to answer now. i think a photo that wasn't - edited would have been a great idea, but this photo not so much. - i think a video would have

gone down very well, - just some sort - of form of evidence. but, you know, she's a very popular figure as well, i think, so she's very important to the royals in terms of their own pr and their own public face. it's her face that's on the front pages of papers. and her absence has really shown how much... ..how much she's been missed. the condition of the princess and the reason for her abdominal surgery two months earlier was not revealed by the royal household, although they said that the medical intervention was not cancer related. weeks of speculation about her wellbeing and whereabouts followed. initially, the palace said that it would only provide significant updates about the princess's condition and that she would not return to her royal duties before easter 202a. it's notjust conspiracy theories. some of it is very speculative. we were made aware that the princess of wales wouldn't be appearing in public for some time after she'd had this medical procedure. you know, you can't ever stop people asking genuine questions, but when there's this vacuum of information, you have both those things and then the stuff that's

untrue and actually quite harmful because, ultimately, even though they're royals, there are real people caught up in this. amid rumours and conspiracy theories about the princess's welfare, prince william continued with his public duties. he even received flowers for his wife on a public visit on 29th february 202a. if you've had even a passing glance at social media or online searches in recent days, there's been an enormous amount of rumour and gossip about the princess of wales. it's been pretty wild in some places. now, kensington palace know this, but they have stressed that nothing has changed here. they had always said that we wouldn't see the princess of wales until after easter, and they say that her recovery is going well. there is a vacuum of information. people are genuinely looking for answers, understandably. everyone becomes an amateur sleuth. well, not quite everyone, but a lot of people. and they're looking for clues and they're picking over images and they're posting videos and they're sharing content and they're getting likes, which is kind of further validating what they're doing, and they know people will look at their content.

then it kind of spirals into the more extreme stuff — disinformation, conspiracy. i found this time and time again, that the people who are at the centre of this, whether they're really famous, really high profile, or whether they're not famous at all, they're just the average person, they find it really hard. the princess had not been seen in public since attending a christmas day service at sandringham in norfolk. thank you so much. that's very sweet of you to come and say hello to us. yeah. well, very happy christmas. merry christmas. fanfare plays on 5th march, the army removed a claim on its website that the princess of wales would be appearing at trooping the colour injune 2024, as she had done the previous year. the claim had caused confusion after kensington palace said it had not confirmed her appearance, but the army didn't seek approval from the palace before publishing the page. this rumour mill kept turning. i think what's important to understand here is that none of this happens in isolation. so it starts with questions about, where's the princess of wales? then you've got examples of other posts that

are shared online. the army, for example, on their website, shared an upcoming event where they suggested that the princess of wales would be coming, and then that was removed and taken down. so all of these little things sort of tie together and start to further inflame this online conversation until a photo like this comes out, people spot that it's been edited — genuinely has been edited — and ham, this all totally explodes into the mainstream, and the average person is seeing it on their social media feeds. but were it not for all of those little things that happened in the build—up to that image and its editing, this wouldn't have unfolded in the same way. the now infamous picture of the princess and her three children went viral for all the wrong reasons. i cannot believe her team didn't pick up on it. - i'm shocked. i would have thought - there would have been such a stringent protocol in place - where they're checking every... more than one person- checking a photo because, i mean, they're quite obvious errors. - i mean, once you see them,

you can't unsee them. - so the conspiracy theories they'd hoped to die down have actually increased. and rather than stopping a certain situation, they've actually fanned the flames and started again. a lot of photographs used by the media have been edited in some ways, but for many news agencies, this mother's day photograph crossed a line. trust is very, very important to the press industry, - and we cannot allow these manipulated images to go| into those systems, - because all of a sudden, then, we are seen as- instigators of manipulation. we have the british press. photographers association, we have the national union ofjournalists.| all of these organisations, if you look at their ethicall codes and codes of conduct, say that absolutely no - manipulation can go ahead - because that lessens the trust for us in the public's eye. but is editing photographs intended for the media new and unusual? for the press industry, - retouching and manipulation is not allowed. the most basic alterations that you can do are things - like sharpening, brightening, maybe darkening. _ you're not allowed to obscure things in photographs, - you're not allowed l

to take things away. cropping is allowed, staging is allowed in portraits, - but not in other situations. the monarchy has always needed the media. i mean, it started with the age of queen victoria. she adored photography and then she had... she was photographed all the time. there's an early picture of queen victoria, i think it's from 1852, with the children. she took one look at this image and she hated it. she got her thumb and she scratched it out. so there — in this image, in this photograph — you've got five nice children and then this blur where queen victoria should be. with the queen mother during the war, when they used photography very much to convey the intimacy of the royal family, you'd see pictures of princess margaret playing the piano or the queen and princess elizabeth knitting for troops and things like that.

it was the sort of thing that people did in their own house, and it was a way of connecting the monarchy with the people. and i think that's what they were trying to do with william and catherine on mother's day. they weren't photographed wearing tiaras or at a state banquet or the children going off to school in their little jackets and so on. they were photographed just being with mum in the garden. a planned social media post led to a pr crisis. what does this say about the royals' communication strategy? the issue is that the media team, ithink, probably- didn't check it. kate probably sent this image on and they took it in good i faith, but they didn't check the image for those minor| manipulations. the problem with the media team . is that they've lost trust now, . or the media team have lost trust in the eyes i of all of these photo agencies. it's a major communication failure from their side to distribute such an image which raises doubts, will only create rumours and...and... make us doubt that she's as well as they want her to look.

and that's how it was important for us to tell it and to kill the picture and to communicate on the... ..to our subscribers, yeah. i'm shocked that it got - through all the procedures that the royal familyj would have in place, to be honest. it's bizarre. i mean, i don't know. what happened there. i don't know how it got out. does the white house ever digitally alter photos of the president, vice president...? digitally altered? not that i know of. i would say no. why would we digitally alter photos? are you talking about...? are you comparing us to the... ..what�*s going on in the uk? i'm doing due diligence... laughter ..the leader - of another country wouldn't alter photos of themselves... why does the monarch have to do anything with us? no, that is not something

that we do here. do you think that social media has changed the relationship with pr, whether it be celebrities or public figures, because there are so many eyes on anything you post now? massively. social media has changed everything, whether royal or not, public figures... they've lost all sense of privacy. and there's an expectation — and in a way, in my opinion, an unfair expectation — for how much a celebrity feels like they have to share of their personal lives now. i mean, before the days of social media, you know, a celebrity would appear on a red carpet. they would do their press tour and then they would disappear again. it's all taken away the form of a celebrity and role model public figure, and they're more sort of changing into sort of the regular person. they're becoming quite humanised now. # right arm out # in, out, in, out # you shake it all about # and i think it's now starting to go into the royalfamily, which obviously has never, ever been a thing. # whoa, the hokey cokey

# knees bent, arms stretched # ra, re, re # do you think that pr and comms are outdated, in a way, in relation to the internet age? well, i've heard people claim that somehow the princess and... prince and princess of wales might be badly advised or out of touch. they're not. the people around them are very smart. you know, they're young, creative, really switched on people, who are very much across all of this. but that doesn't mean you can control it and you can be aware of what people might need to say. they use social media to put stuff out directly. and, you know, they know all...how it works. but that's not the same thing as being able to tame the beast, because once stories get on the road, it's very hard to bring them back. has the prince and princess of wales's response made things

better or worse? the statement, i'm really confused how that got out, to be honest. it's...it was... it didn't answer anything or provide anything. was itjust her? i think that's a conversation that some families might have had about whether it could have been a joint responsibility, but it certainly fell to her to take the blame. and i don't know what conversations were had before that, but it was quite a big decision for her to say she did it and no—one else. i think people would have been expecting a lot more information regarding that, because i think the fear is now, with that photo, what it's produced is a lack of trust with the public now, and i think that's going to be their biggest fight right now. for some, the information age has turned into the disinformation age. has the era we live in made it more difficult for high—profile figures like the royals to communicate with the media and the public? so i think, you know, . celebrities, high—profile people, they edit photos - all the time and you see loads of social media users looking for clues that they've edited something. maybe there's a wonky line, . or something that doesn't quite bend in the right place, - or it doesn't look quite right. the difference this time around | is not only that this image has|

come from the royal family, i but also that this image came at a time when there was this huge conversation happening| online, on social medial and in the media, about kate middleton, about the princess of wales i and her health. and i think that were it not for that kind of hotbed - of discussion happening, this wouldn't have really| unfolded in the way that it has. - there's this weird and i guess unfair expectation that there's an expectation to provide — where is kate? and i think it comes from a place of love with her. i think people love her and they're just generally worried about her. and the problem is, people who weren't interested in all those "where's kate?" conspiracies are, are now involved, like, "well, this is weird, what are they hiding?" as someone who spends all day long thinking and working and talking about the royals, when you watch these conspiracy videos, do you ever get wrapped up in them? do you ever think, like, "oh, that could be true, actually?" or do you just think, you know, it's not worth looking at? well, i think a bit like some apps have filters, i think, if you're covering this area, you need a kind of conspiracy theory filter... yeah. ..and there arejust so many, and they run away with themselves.

i think part of the fascination for them is because, in a way, these are like sort of soap operas on a national level and people love the idea of these possible narratives. yeah. so people identify very strongly with celebrities or famous people or people they think they know. and i think all that comes together. and watching it dispassionately as a journalist, you just have to think, "no, no, no!" you know, "stop all that and just look at the facts." with the princess not scheduled to make a return to public duties before easter, no original image published and basic facts about the picture still unknown, an information vacuum remains. i'm not too bad at drinking pints, but pulling pints- is another matter. news has a short memory. it might be that, in a few weeks' time, we're looking back on it and it's something they canjoke about and make fun of. but, you know, they're not out of touch people. they're modern millennial royals. they're very aware of all this stuff. they're very attuned to what's being said. i think, when it comes to controlling the narrative, they lost it multiple times throughout this whole thing

and they've had to fight back and try and take control. but it's just gone wrong every single time. it is a true pr disaster. it's quite fascinating. definitely from something like the royal family, you wouldn't expect to ever see it. i think perhaps the palace now will be thinking, "hopefully this willjust stop. "people will lose interest, move on, "other things will come along." but there are concerns that if perhaps the original photo surfaces, that this could develop further. it's a big global story. so speculation on and offline is bound to continue. but for how long? hello again.

at last some beautiful spring sunshine for much of the uk on saturday including here in cumbria. it wasn't long before we saw the cloud thicken from the west before outbreaks of rain moving northwards and eastwards. this will come down as rain over wales for a time into central and southern england and eastern england so a soggy start to the day but it is a mild one, milder than it was on saturday morning. it isa it is a very wet start for parts of southern england with the heavy rain clearing into the heavy rain clearing into the north sea. here it should brighten up by lunchtime. perhaps some more sunshine developing. sunny spells elsewhere with coastal and hill fog for a time towards the west. it will cloud over towards northern ireland through the afternoon.

outbreaks of rain, some of the showers and heavy inventory for northern england, but mild again, we could see 17 celsius in east anglia, central and southern england through the afternoon. towards the west again, heading through sunday night and into monday. these were the funds fizzle out. there will be some rain in the north and west through the night then it is patchy cloud as we had too much of monday. for most of us on monday it will stay dry, cloud in over, outbreaks of rain over northern ireland and western scotland by the end of the day. the air is mild. the temperatures were peaked in the teens for many. keeping the mother heading through monday and tuesday with the southwesterly wind. on tuesday we are likely to see some more heavy rain through the north and west. so for northern ireland in western scotland. elsewhere, ithink it'll stay largely dry as we had throughout the day. a lot of the cloud will break up and we will see brighter spells

developing. all highs out towards the southwest by the time we get to the end of tuesday because this rain could cause some problems perhaps on wednesday. but the air is very mild on tuesday, 12— 16 celsius. it could turn cooler as we head through wednesday and thursday. it stays unsettled with more rain in the forecasted times. goodbye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. russia accuses ukraine of disrupting its presidential elections with a barrage of airstrikes, though the vote outcome is all but certain to favour vladimir putin. among those voting are russians living in the estonian border town of narva. the bbc speaks with the country's prime minister

about russian aggression in ukraine. germany becomes the latest country to criticise israel's plans for an offensive in the southern gazan city of rafah and to call for more aid to be allowed in. hello. russia has accused ukraine of disrupting its presidential elections. voters headed to the polls on the second day of a three—day election that is almost certain to result in victory for incumbent president vladimir putin. but moscow said ukraine is "intensifying its terrorist activities to signal to the west it needs more financial assistance and weaponry. " russian authorities say two people were killed by ukrainian shelling, in the city of belgorod near the border with ukraine. shops and schools were closed in the city. authorities also reported shelling at a voting station in a russian—occupied part of ukraine's zaporizhzhia

region, and said ukraine targeted an oil refinery