Untrue Story About Angelina Jolie Attending Royal Wedding Tops Search Results

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Angelina Jolie did not attend the royal wedding on Saturday, and yet one day after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle exchanged vows inside St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, if one were to search the actress’s name, one of the very top results would be a provably untrue story about her going to the marriage ceremony. It’s not only false news, but it’s also a three-day-old report. Gossip Cop actually debunked that very claim days ago, but instead of our scrupulously investigated article, the inaccurate story has been allowed to still dominate search results.

“Angelina Jolie Will Likely Be Attending the Royal Wedding on Saturday,” reads the headline of a Harper’s Bazaar story on Sunday that’s more readily available online (see below) than our fact-checked article. The women’s fashion magazine even maintained it had “all the reasons why you should expect to see the actress and activist at Windsor Castle on May 19.” It primarily argued that Jolie would be at the royal wedding because the actress arrived at Heathrow Airport in London last week.

You know who else arrived at the London airport last week? Approximately 762,794 other people. In fact, on average, of the 213,668 people at Heathrow every day, 108,970 are arrivals. And an infinitesimal percentage of those people were invited to Prince Harry and Markle’s wedding.

The glossy publication also tried to justify its story by noting Jolie has strong royal connections having “received the title of honorary dame from Queen Elizabeth II this past October.” That, too, was sloppy reporting. Actually, Jolie became an honorary dame four years earlier in October of 2014.

More significantly, it was not the Queen’s invitation list. It was Markle and Prince Harry’s wedding, and Jolie was not a guest, as Gossip Cop noted nearly half a week ago. While it was since reported that a slew of celebrities were in attendance at the royal wedding, including Amal and George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, Elton John, Victoria and David Beckham, Serena Williams, James Corden, Idris Elba, and Carey Mulligan and Marcus Mumford, Jolie was not one of them.

Harper’s Bazaar also offered up as proof in its (now highly trafficked) article that Jolie would be at the wedding since she once “wore a suit by Ralph & Russo, the designers most favored to be designing Meghan Markle’s wedding gown.” That, of course, is not evidence whatsoever. As widely reported, Meghan actually wore a Givenchy gown, created by British designer Clare Waight Keller, who’s the artistic director of the French fashion label.

Following its string of misfires, the magazine concluded that given Jolie’s “new title as a dame and… her arrival in London… we’re expecting to see her (looking absolutely incredible)… in the pews and at the receptions to follow this Saturday, May 19.” But all of that was verifiably untrue. Yet, as stated above, if one were to search on Sunday the name “Angelina Jolie” — a full 36 hours after the nuptials — one of the top searches would be that article about the actress likely attending the royal wedding. The Harper’s Bazaar story was royally wrong and so are search results for Jolie.

(Search Engine, May 20, 2018)