The lies that Martin Bashir told to secure his TV interview with Princess Diana in 1995 were comprehensively exposed in Lord Dyson’s inquiry this year, as were the BBC’s attempts to cover up his behaviour. Yet even now the BBC is fighting tooth and nail to prevent the exposure of documents which suggest a much more recent attempt to obscure aspects of the scandal.
On December 2 the BBC was served with a legal notice by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which administers the Freedom of Information Act. Having breached the act and defied a written instruction from the ICO to comply, the BBC was threatened with contempt of court proceedings unless it responded to questions I had put on one of the key points.
Why did it first hide from public view the handwritten note from Diana, said to absolve Bashir of blame? And how was this note recovered on the very day Dyson’s public inquiry was announced? Dyson touched on these issues but left intriguing questions unexplored. So I raised them with the BBC under freedom of information law.
The documents I eventually received were mostly photocopies of more than 100 publicly available news clippings. There were a handful of emails, sent between senior BBC executives as the scandal gathered pace towards the end of last year. But the content of the emails was almost entirely redacted. Three of them do raise an interesting question though.
In an email of October 31, 2020, Bashir replies to questions posed by his boss, the executive editor Richard Burgess, concerning the “Diana note”. On November 13 Burgess emails a group of BBC bigwigs, including the company secretary, Phil Harrold, for which we have just the intriguing title: “Here are the notes from my conversation with Martin Bashir today . . .” Yet on November 7 Harrold had briefed the BBC board in an email: “. . . we are unable to discuss any of this with Martin Bashir, as he remains seriously unwell”. The board may have cause to wonder whether there’s something they missed?
I have appealed against the BBC’s heavy censorship of the disclosed documents. A second request, to see closely related material concerning the scandal, is awaiting a ruling by the ICO. It is a painstaking process, winkling documents from the BBC in this way, yet it was a single document released to me in October 2020 that ignited the fury of Diana’s brother Earl Spencer and ultimately led to the setting up of the Dyson inquiry.
I suspect there is more to come and that there are tough questions which the BBC has yet to face on how current bosses attempted to manage the scandal only 12 months ago.
Andy Webb is a filmmaker and writer
Dear God no it does not.
I know the Murdoch Press desperately want to make this into a thing to suit their own ends, but what happened with Bashir and Diana really is no worse than the Murdoch Press going through peoples’ bins and hacking their voicemails.
The Tories are under attack. Quick, to the Whataboutabus!
Asian British journalist harangued regarding interview conducted 30+ years ago with now deceased former Princess. Basically the British can’t handle the fact that they’ve made a mess of their own country do will go after people of colour as the easy target
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The lies that Martin Bashir told to secure his TV interview with Princess Diana in 1995 were comprehensively exposed in Lord Dyson’s inquiry this year, as were the BBC’s attempts to cover up his behaviour. Yet even now the BBC is fighting tooth and nail to prevent the exposure of documents which suggest a much more recent attempt to obscure aspects of the scandal.
On December 2 the BBC was served with a legal notice by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which administers the Freedom of Information Act. Having breached the act and defied a written instruction from the ICO to comply, the BBC was threatened with contempt of court proceedings unless it responded to questions I had put on one of the key points.
Why did it first hide from public view the handwritten note from Diana, said to absolve Bashir of blame? And how was this note recovered on the very day Dyson’s public inquiry was announced? Dyson touched on these issues but left intriguing questions unexplored. So I raised them with the BBC under freedom of information law.
The documents I eventually received were mostly photocopies of more than 100 publicly available news clippings. There were a handful of emails, sent between senior BBC executives as the scandal gathered pace towards the end of last year. But the content of the emails was almost entirely redacted. Three of them do raise an interesting question though.
In an email of October 31, 2020, Bashir replies to questions posed by his boss, the executive editor Richard Burgess, concerning the “Diana note”. On November 13 Burgess emails a group of BBC bigwigs, including the company secretary, Phil Harrold, for which we have just the intriguing title: “Here are the notes from my conversation with Martin Bashir today . . .” Yet on November 7 Harrold had briefed the BBC board in an email: “. . . we are unable to discuss any of this with Martin Bashir, as he remains seriously unwell”. The board may have cause to wonder whether there’s something they missed?
I have appealed against the BBC’s heavy censorship of the disclosed documents. A second request, to see closely related material concerning the scandal, is awaiting a ruling by the ICO. It is a painstaking process, winkling documents from the BBC in this way, yet it was a single document released to me in October 2020 that ignited the fury of Diana’s brother Earl Spencer and ultimately led to the setting up of the Dyson inquiry.
I suspect there is more to come and that there are tough questions which the BBC has yet to face on how current bosses attempted to manage the scandal only 12 months ago.
Andy Webb is a filmmaker and writer
Dear God no it does not.
I know the Murdoch Press desperately want to make this into a thing to suit their own ends, but what happened with Bashir and Diana really is no worse than the Murdoch Press going through peoples’ bins and hacking their voicemails.
The Tories are under attack. Quick, to the Whataboutabus!
Asian British journalist harangued regarding interview conducted 30+ years ago with now deceased former Princess. Basically the British can’t handle the fact that they’ve made a mess of their own country do will go after people of colour as the easy target