Did the BBC change its home page color from red to black before the announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II? No, that's not true: Archived copies of the BBC.com banner show it was black before the Crown's September 8, 2022, announcement about the queen being under medical supervision and was still black when her death was announced hours later. BBC News' homepage banner color, red, did not change in the days leading up to her death, either.
The claim appeared in a September 8, 2022, tweet (archived here) on the @DrAhmedKalebi account. It said, "BBC has changed its website banner from red to black as the entire UK Royal Family goes to Queen Elizabeth's bedside." It continued:
Looks like the inevitable news is being prepared.
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Thu Sep 8 17:18:26 2022 UTC)
Archived copies of the BBC homepage and archived copies of BBC News' homepage show that the BBC homepage banner was black on August 31, 2022, as it also was when the tweet was posted:
(Source: Web.archive.org screenshot taken on Thu Sep 8 17:45:00 2022 UTC)
At the same time, the BBC News homepage banner was red on September 8, 2022, before the queen's death was announced. At the time of this writing, just after the announcement of Queen Elizabeth's death, BBC News homepage banner was still red:
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(Source: Web.archive.org screenshot taken on Thu Sep 8 17:45:00 2022 UTC)
