Background

On September 8, 2022, the United Kingdom lost its figurehead, Queen Elizabeth II, who was England’s longest-serving monarch from 1952-2022. Her granddaughter-in-law, Meghan Markle is, like many others in the royal family, a bit of a controversial figure. In 2020, Meghan Markle and her husband, Prince Harry, disassociated themselves from the royal family and moved to America on account of wanting to be free of living up to the  royal family expectations. Many people blamed Markle for this and have been searching for reasons to hate her since. Many rumors have started circulating the internet about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s controversial return to England for the Queen’s funeral.

Head to Original Source

The day of the Queen’s death, a photo of Meghan Markle wearing  The Smiths “The Queen Is Dead” album t-shirt spread throughout Twitter. Twitter users responded rather quickly, claiming how horrible and unbelievable Markle’s actions were. The tweet that garnished much of the buzz was retweeted by The Smiths drummer, Johnny Marr, posted the photoshopped photo as support for Markle. It gathered over 31.1k likes. The original post is from @deadposhuk, who creates controversial t-shirts.

The sentiments found in Twitter’s comments ranged from”They weren’t bothered about going to see the Queen when she was alive” to “They dare turn up to ‘look at the flowers’ when she’s died,” to a Twitter hash-tag #GoHomeMeghanandHarry.”

There was already a bit of hate towards Markle, and the picture added fuel to the fire. However, if you were to look at the photo, you would be able to tell it’s photoshopped.

Try a Keyword Search

The photo of Markle’s face, easily found on Getty Images, was cut and pasted on to a woman of a similar skin tone by twitter user @deadposhuk to advertise the t-shirt design. Whether or not the user who used the photo to bash Markle had realized it was fake is unclear. If you were to Google “Meghan Markle The Queen is Dead shirt” the first thing that comes up is an article denouncing the image.

Spotting Reliable Sources

The main source used to fact check this was twitter itself. The evidence and original source of misinformation is right there, visible for anyone to see. Searching for the unaltered image on Getty Images also proved to be reliable. When using actual articles to fact check, a good one to use is AFP. This is a dependable fact-checking website able to provide you with any corrections on lies you may see in the media.

When it comes to spotting reliable sources, an author is the easiest one to check. If there isn’t an author attached to an article, you may want to ask yourself why they didn’t want to attach there name to their work.

Dates are also a very easy way to fact check, as most reliable news articles will give you the day the article was published.

You also want to pay attention to the way the author acts when in the role of a reporter. See if they’re asking original sources. The more reliable their sources are, the more trustworthy your sources will be.

Rating

Overall, the picture isn’t legit. It was originally altered for an advertisement. It was later used as a weapon meant to hurt Markle’s reputation and likability. Either way, Meghan Markle did not wear a “The Queen Is Dead” t-shirt.