A judge has strong-armed the BBC to release thousands of emails about Martin Bashir’s controversial interview with Princess Diana.
In the landmark interview more than a quarter-century ago, the princess spoke of her ‘crowded’ marriage to Prince Charles to the veteran journalist.
What was initially hailed as the ‘scoop of the century’ was quickly dogged by claims Bashmir used dishonest tactics to persuade Diana into the interview.
The BBC had ordered an internal probe into allegations of impropriety in 1996the network’s news chief at the time, Tony Hall, found Bashir to be in the clear.
But the allegations resurfaced in 2020 after an ITV documentary showed how Bashir commissioned phoney bank statements suggesting royal staff close to Princess Diana were being paid to spy on her.
How the BBC handled the scandal has also come under scrutiny.
Andy Webb, who directed another documentary about the interview for Channel 4, lodged a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for emails BBC bosses sent one another about the journalist over two months in 2020.
The corporation handed Webb a few but not all of the more than 3,000 emails, the remaining being ones deemed by the BBC as either ‘irrelevant’ or ‘legally privileged’, according to the BBC.
Judge Brian Kennedy ordered the BBC to release them, saying that the corporation had been ‘inconsistent, erroneous and unreliable’ in how it has dealt with the request.
A tribunal had heard in September Webb accuse the network of staging a ‘cover-up’.
The BBC apologised for its ‘errors’ in handling the FOI request.
Webb welcomed the judgement.
‘It is overwhelmingly in the public interest for these internal emails to be divulged to the public,’ Webb wrote in the Mail on Sunday.
An estimated 23 million people watched the interview that originally aired on Panorama – the BBC later sold the international rights for about £1,300,000.
The interview was controversial from the get-go. Wary of how such a bombshell tell-all would go down, not only did the BBC not get the blessing from Buckingham Palace, but the corporation’s chairperson, Marmaduke Hussey, didn’t know about it.
An official inquiry by the former top judge Lord Dyson in 2021 concluded Bashir deceived Diana’s brother, Charles, Earl Spencer, to cosy up to Diana and score an interview.
When questioned by BBC bosses, Bashir claimed he never showed the statements to Earl Spencer to gain his confidence.
The Dyson report said Bashir ‘lied and maintained the lie until he realised that it was no longer sustainable. This was most reprehensible behaviour which casts considerable doubt on his credibility generally’.
She had been hoping at the time, the inquiry found, to chat with ‘any experienced and reputable reporter’ about the unravelling of her marriage.
Bashi, 60, left the BBC the following year citing health reasons.
Spencer, who had long been a supporter of Webb’s investigation, said the saga is a black eye for the BBC at a time when the network is taking an axe to its budget.
‘People at the BBC who are responsible for this have hidden behind expensive lawyers at a time when the BBC, this great national and international institution, is making cuts,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme.
‘And I think that’s obscene.’
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