BBC caption identifies Kevin Rudd as Canada’s prime minister: Aussies take to Twitter

Andy Radia
·Politics Reporter

For a brief moment, on Tuesday, Canada had a new prime minister — at least according to the U.K.'s public broadcaster.

As explained by The Australian, a BBC caption writer accidentally wrote "Prime Minister, Canada" under Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's name.

Perhaps Mr Rudd was going to run for the Canadian title, but had to zip, or the BBC honestly didn't know who he was.

Not so, according to the PM's office.

"The PM definitely hasn't been given a promotion - he already has the best job in the world," a spokesman told news.com.au.

The mistake, resulted in some amusing tweets — from political watchers in both countries.

From Australia:

And here are a couple of tweets from Canada:

Rudd shouldn't feel too bad about this — he could have been called a lot worse.

[ Related: Ontario mayor miffed at Elizabeth May for spreading false rumour about rail incident ]

You'll recall, last summer, that two Conservative MPs accidentally called Stephen Harper the 'prime minister of cannibal.'

And BBC should probably get a pass as well. These types of mistakes are more common than one might think.

In 2007, CNN accidentally had a caption reading "Who killed him?" under a report about then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Chavez, of course, died in 2013.

And earlier this year, a Fox Network affiliate misidentified television star Zooey Deschanel as the Boston Marathon bomber in their caption.

Yup — being called the prime minister of Canada isn't such a bad thing.

(Photo from Twitter)

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