![]() He also asked if Mr Bashir, the BBC’s religion editor at the time, had a copy of a note written by the Princess in the aftermath of the 1995 interview. In a series of messages in late October 2020, Richard Burgess, the director of news content, put to Mr Bashir an allegation that, despite his health, he had been “seen in a club”. In autumn 2020, with the 25th anniversary of the interview approaching, the BBC was coming under renewed scrutiny to explain its handling of the affair.Īccording to official statements, however, Mr Bashir’s state of health made it impossible to provide meaningful answers.īut emails from the time, obtained under FoI, now suggest Mr Bashir was capable of lucid discussion, with some directly concerning the allegations being made against him. However, in 2021 an inquiry by Lord Dyson found that Mr Bashir, a relatively junior BBC reporter at the time, had acted in a “deceitful” way in order to secure the interview, faking documents to make the Princess think those close to her were receiving money from tabloid newspapers and the security services to spy on her.Īt the time, the then Duke of Cambridge responded by excoriating the BBC’s failures, describing the interview as a “major contribution in making my parents’ relationship worse”. The 1995 interview was hailed at the time as one of the great all-time royal scoops, in which the late Princess famously said: “There were three of us in this marriage.” The revelations threaten to add a further layer of controversy to one of the worst scandals in the corporation’s history. Some of the most senior executives in BBC News are now under pressure to explain the apparent disparity between the corporation’s public stance and their private communications. His medical condition also provided bosses with a legal loophole not to disclose more than 3,200 emails relevant to the case under freedom of information (FoI) laws. ![]() The BBC has been accused of misleading the public about Martin Bashir’s health in order to withhold information regarding its notorious Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales.Ī tranche of emails seen by The Telegraph has revealed that senior managers were in regular discussion with the disgraced reporter in autumn 2020, as accusations were gathering about his use of forged bank statements in gaining the Princess’s trust.Īt the time, however, the corporation repeatedly said it could not answer questions because Mr Bashir was “seriously unwell”.
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