October 06, 2007	Saturday	Ramazan 23, 1428

LONDON: A BBC television executive resigned on Friday over a documentary which wrongly implied Queen Elizabeth II stormed out of a photo shoot with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz after a row over her crown.

Peter Fincham, who was controller of the main BBC1 channel, stepped down after an independent inquiry released on Friday criticised “misjudgements, poor practice and ineffective systems” at Britain's public broadcaster.

Stephen Lambert, head of production company RDF, which made the documentary, also resigned.

The resignations come after a number of recent high-profile admissions from the BBC, its main commercial rival ITV and other broadcasters of faking viewer phone-in competitions or other parts of TV or radio programmes.

Fincham announced at a press launch on July 11 that the piece, “A Year With The Queen”, would show the 81-year-old monarch storming out of the shoot after a row over whether or not she should remove her crown.

Fincham, who had described the scene with Leibovitz as “a very memorable little sequence”, had learned that the story was untrue within hours, but did not correct it until the following day.

The BBC later apologised after admitting that the sequence of events had been “misrepresented”, creating the false impression that the queen had halted the photo shoot.—AFP