Yahoo News BBC accused of 'making up' claim schoolchildren 'drowned out' anti-Charles protesters
Charles and the Queen Consort were touring Liverpool's Central Library at the time.
The BBC has been accused of "making up" a claim that schoolchildren “drowned out” anti-monarchy protesters during King Charles's visit to Liverpool.
On the second leg of the royal visit, Charles and the Queen Consort toured the city’s Central Library to mark its twinning with another library in Odessa, Ukraine.
A group of protesters from the anti-monarchy group Republic met the royal party as they arrived.
BBC Merseyside then tweeted that schoolchildren had drowned out “Not My King” chants from demonstrators but this has been disputed by the group.
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BBC Merseyside posted a video of the schoolchildren chanting, with the caption: “Protestors chanting ‘not my King’ are drowned out by children chanting ‘he’s our King’.
Graham Smith, from Republic, denied this and told Yahoo News UK: “The point was we were not chanting at the time, unclear why the BBC made that up."
He added: “It’s not possible for schoolchildren to drown out 70 people”.
The Republic Twitter account also denied its protesters were "drowned out" and described the claim as "a worrying bit of spin from the BBC".
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It added: "Our protesters were not chanting at this point. We will be asking @bbcmerseyside for an explanation.
"It is also questionable to suggest that children are of a strong view one way or another on an issue like this when they’ve been bussed in for a bit of fun."
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A BBC spokesperson said: “We provided a range of coverage across radio, TV and online reflecting various sentiments along the way.”
Republic states on its website that it wants “to see the monarchy abolished and the King replaced with an elected, democratic head of state”.
It adds: “In place of the King we want someone chosen by the people, not running the government but representing the nation independently of our politicians.”
