BBC Apologizes To Royal Family For Explosive Princess Diana Interview

After more than 25 years, the BBC has apologized for the infamous 1995 interview that BBC correspondent Martin Bashir conducted with Princess Diana, acknowledging Bashir lied repeatedly to Diana and even commissioned false bank statements to buttress his claims that her close friends were betraying her, and the BBC covered up for Bashir afterward.

The BBC “has sent personal letters of apology to Prince William, Prince Harry and other royals,” The Daily Mail reported, adding, “The BBC is also returning all awards the explosive interview accrued, including a Bafta TV gong won in 1996.”

The BBC reported, “The programme, which attracted a UK audience of 23m, was a career-defining moment for reporter Martin Bashir. But after accusations resurfaced last autumn that Bashir misled the princess to gain her trust, the BBC established an inquiry led by the former Supreme Court judge Lord Dyson. That inquiry has judged Bashir to be ‘unreliable,’ ‘devious,’ and ‘dishonest.’”

After a six-month investigation, Lord Dyson stated, “Mr. Bashir deceived and induced him [Earl Spencer] to arrange a meeting with Princess Diana. By gaining access to Princess Diana in this way, Mr. Bashir was able to persuade her to agree to give the interview. This behaviour was in serious breach of the 1993 edition of the BBC’s Producer Guidelines on straight dealing.”

Lord Dyson added: “I have concluded that, without justification, the BBC covered up in its press logs such facts as it had been able to establish about how Mr. Bashir secured the interview; and failed to mention the issue at all on any news programme and thereby fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark.”

Bashir reportedly used the false bank statements to ingratiate himself with Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother to use him as a way to get access to Diana. A confidential internal BBC management document written by the outgoing head of TV Current Affairs, Tim Gardam, stated, according to The Daily Mail, that Bashir misled his bosses by denying he had shown the fake bank statements to anyone.

Diana’s friend Simone Simmons claimed, “The interview led to her divorce and losing her HRH titles. He destroyed her psychologically and made her paranoid — saying the royals wanted to bump her off and distrust her loyal staff and friends.”

Former BBC director-general Lord Anthony Hall , who served as head of news for the BBC when the investigation of Bashir initially occurred, said in 1996 that Bashir had no explanation for why he’d created the false bank statements, The Daily Mail reported.  Hall reportedly said that Bashir regarded Spencer as “the best route” to “get to the Princess of Wales.”

Hall said, “I have read Lord Dyson’s report, and I accept that our investigation 25 years ago into how Panorama secured the interview with Princess Diana fell well short of what was required. In hindsight, there were further steps we could and should have taken following complaints about Martin Bashir’s conduct. I was wrong to give Martin Bashir the benefit of the doubt, basing that judgment as I did on what appeared to be deep remorse on his part.”

After a six-month investigation, Judge Lord Dyson stated, “Mr. Bashir deceived and induced him [Earl Spencer] to arrange a meeting with Princess Diana. By gaining access to Princess Diana in this way, Mr. Bashir was able to persuade her to agree to give the interview. This behaviour was in serious breach of the 1993 edition of the BBC’s Producer Guidelines on straight dealing.”

Lord Dyson added, “I have concluded that, without justification, the BBC covered up in its press logs such facts as it had been able to establish about how Mr. Bashir secured the interview; and failed to mention the issue at all on any news programme and thereby fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark.”

After the interview, Lord Hall conducted an investigation into Bashir’s actions that allegedly fooled Diana, but Dyson stated that Hall’s investigation was “woefully ineffective” and that it “did not scrutinise” Bashir even though it became apparent that Bashir had lied three times about showing the fake bank statements to Spencer. Dyson’s report asserted, “Lord Hall could not reasonably have concluded, as he did, that Mr. Bashir was an honest and honourable man.” The report added that the BBC had “without justification” “covered up” Bashir’s behavior and “thereby fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark.”

On a Panorama special titled “Princess Diana, Martin Bashir and the BBC,” Earl Spencer stated, “The irony is I met Martin Bashir on the 31st of August 1995, because exactly two years later she died. And I do draw a line between the two events. It’s quite clear from the introduction that I sat in on the 19th of September 1995 everyone was going to be made untrustworthy, and I think that Diana did lose trust in really key people. This is a young girl in her mid-30s who has lived this extraordinarily turbulent and difficult time in the public eye. She didn’t know who to trust and in the end, when she died two years later, she was without any form of real protection.”

Spencer added that Bashir, who said last week he was leaving his job as BBC News religion editor because of his health, was “very good at amplifying people’s anxieties” and making people think he would “save you in a difficult and dangerous world.”

Patrick Jephson, Diana’s private secretary at the time, claimed she was “cast adrift” from her “royal support structure that had guided and safeguarded her for so many years” after the interview, in which Diana famously said “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” Jephson added, “Inevitably it made her vulnerable to people who were unable properly to look after her.”

After Jephson was shown a note from a meeting between Diana and Bashir that called him “dangerous,” he reacted, “Well, I suppose from Martin Bashir’s perspective I was the obstacle that had to be removed. So by removing me from a position of trust, it left the way open for him to give her any yarn he wanted to try and ingratiate himself with her.”

He said that after Diana and Bashir first met, “There was a heightened state of anxiety. I was aware there was something the matter and it involved me and I didn’t know what it was but I hoped it would make itself known sooner or later. … After the interview relationships with Buckingham Palace became very strained. So professionally, just speaking as a private secretary, my job, which is already not easy, became I felt impossibly difficult.”

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