BBC’S very future rests on result of inquiry into Bashir
The findings of an independent probe into circumstances surrounding Princess Diana’s Panorama interview with Martin Bashir are due to be published within weeks. Former BBC TV News and Royal correspondent MICHAEL COLE explains how serious the result could be for the broadcaster
THE SCANDAL surrounding Martin Bashir’s 1995 Panorama interview with Princess Diana is the gravest threat to the BBC in its 99 years of broadcasting to the world. If allegations of Bashir’s unscrupulous tactics to gain the Princess’s confidence are proved true, it could shatter public confidence in the Corporation.
The BBC appointed a retired Supreme Court judge and President of the Appeal Court, Lord Dyson, to carry out its own investigation, the second, into what went on behind the scenes of “The Interview of the Century”.
Lord Dyson is now nearing the end of his enquiry and a Panorama investigation into the original show will be aired soon.
What Lord Dyson says will be crucial in light of the decision by the Metropolitan Police to take no further action on a complaint about forged bank statements, falsely indicating that Earl Spencer’s head of security was betraying him to the media and was also in the pay of the Security Services, that Bashir is said to have used to gain the confidence of the Princess’s brother who then agreed to introduce Bashir to Diana.
This alleged intrigue of deception could hardly be more serious for a Corporation
‘Bosses would be in for a torrid time’
built on the bedrock of telling the truth to the nation, in peace and war. And if the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee decides that the facts disclosed by Lord Dyson’s report call for parliamentary scrutiny, BBC bosses will be in for a torrid time.
Many of the most pointed questions will be aimed at Lord Tony Hall, former director-general of the BBC who conducted the first BBC enquiry which exonerated and even praised Martin Bashir.
Hall, then head of news and current affairs, gave Bashir a free pass but punished the freelance graphic artist Matt Wiessler, who had been allegedly instructed by Bashir to create the fake bank statements to the reporter’s detailed specifications.
Wiessler was driven out of his awardwinning television role when his work dried up because, unknown to him, Hall had blacklisted him from the BBC.
As Wiessler has said, he was the fall guy, simply because he did Bashir a favour.
The BBC chiefs who granted Bashir permission to procure the Diana interview and then transmitted it – the only significant cut being her remarks about the Queen Mother – had entrusted the BBC’S reputation to a new, largely unknown and fairly inexperienced journalist not even on the BBC staff.
The BBC’S credibility could be fatally weakened and at a time when trust in so important.
It is not going too far to say that the Corporation’s continued existence would be threatened. With its Royal Charter up for review in 2027, and controversy surrounding its alleged Left-wing bias, super-wokeness and inept re-imposition of the £157.50 licence fee on the over-75s, public opinion may turn sharply against the BBC, just as millions are deserting its TV channels for Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services.
Having worked for BBC News for more than 20 years in 56 countries, sometimes in very difficult circumstances, I am aghast to learn how badly things went wrong seven years after I chose to leave the Corporation in 1988.
The Princess, to my certain knowledge, did believe her phones were being bugged, that her movements were being reported back to her husband and that her life was under threat.
If Bashir played on those fears for the prestige of pulling off an interview with the most famous woman in the world,
then he and the
it has rarely been
BBC are in a lot of trouble. It will be far more serious than the Hutton Inquiry into the death of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly, which led to the immediate resignations of the BBC’S then-chairman Gavyn Davies and director-general Greg Dyke. It will be even more dangerous than Winston Churchill’s desire to turn the infant BBC into a Government mouthpiece during the General Strike of 1926. The BBC survived that one but here it is on shakier ground.
I was proud to work for BBC TV News. I believed in public service broadcasting. So did all those who worked there. We were not paid the absurdly inflated fees the BBC doles out today to feed the vanity of its presenters, in itself a very bad thing.
My editors were tried and tested journalists who had learned their trade on provincial papers like the Manchester Evening News, Belfast Telegraph and Western Mail.
They were dedicated to being first with a story. But first the story had to be right.
Some would have cut off their left arm rather than deliberately run a false story or broadcast any tale tainted by the sort of deception and skulduggery commonplace in the old Fleet Street.
I saw an assistant editor, a tough Scotsman, in tears because he was ordered by a stupid, hasty boss to lead his 6pm news bulletin with a story that had not been checked and he did not trust. When the story was promptly revealed as based entirely on the word of a Walter Mittytype imposter, the Scot wept in shame.
That is how serious TV News was about its responsibilities to the viewing public. And that is why its 9pm news often commanded audiences of 12 to 14 million, up to 22 million if the programme before on BBC One had been especially popular.
These days BBC’S 10 O’clock News attracts a small fraction of those numbers.
Although Martin Bashir has been ill I do hope he has made a sufficient recovery to present his defence to Lord Dyson, because the outcome could not be more serious for the Corporation that now employs him as its Religious Editor.
His answers to the many questions that this scandal has thrown up may go a long way to deciding whether or not the BBC remains the gold standard for factual accuracy, truth and honesty, or is consigned to history as a great institution brought down by a great and terrible mistake.
‘The outcome could not be more serious’