It’s rarely breaking news that someone is not dead, but such headlines appeared on the DailyMail and elsewhere on Monday after a wave of disinformation pushed by Russian outlets claimed King Charles III had died.
“We would like to inform you that the news about the death of King Charles III is fake,” the British embassy in Ukraine posted on X in response to the fake news.
Russian state news agency TASS reported the story was fake, as did the Kremlin’s newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which noted that several Telegram channels had “published unverified and false information.”
According to the DailyMail, outlets that spread the false information included Sputnik, Readkovka and Mash—though all since have corrected the report.
The “Gazeta Ru” account on X similarly boosted the false information, incorrectly writing that Buckingham Palace announced his death. The post in question has since been edited to reflect that “most likely the information is fake.”
The false claim the King had died was spurred by a fake Buckingham Palace news release.
Andrew Roth, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, shared a copy of the fake release on X, writing: “Russian media running with the mega scoop that King Charles III has died backed up by this very convincing royal announcement that looks like it was put together in OpenOffice.”
Other users on X dismissed separate claims that Buckingham Palace flags were at half-mast.
“The flag at Buckingham Palace is NOT at half-mast! The circulating video is old, from Sep 2022,” wrote one account. “No mourning in the Royal family right now. Don’t fall for false claims.”
While the disinformation campaign was debunked, it prompted a range of online jokes and pseudo-copy cats.
“This is the real one,” one X user wrote of a photoshopped news release stating King Charles was “accidentally beheaded” during “a routine prostate operation,” a reference to the monarch undergoing treatment for an enlarged prostate last month.
Another user posted a different joke release based on the film “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Conspiracies surrounding the 75-year-old monarch’s health have been swirling amid his cancer diagnosis and Kate Middleton’s absence from the public eye. Some have even made baseless connections between the King’s health and Middleton’s absence, alleging without evidence that Middleton had become a “forced organ donor to King Charles.”
Middleton’s absence—which Kensington Palace attributed to her recovery from a planned abdominal surgery—was the subject of a plethora of conspiracies, though she was spotted in public for the first time since Christmas over the weekend.
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