The BBC’s top lawyer admitted yesterday that the Martin Bashir crisis that led to Lord Dyson’s devastating inquiry could have been avoided if they had only consulted Princess Diana’s brother.
Princes William and Harry publicly chastised the corporation in 2021 after Lord Dyson exposed how Bashir had tricked his mother into giving his famous Panorama interview and how senior executives had covered up his devious tricks.
Yesterday, BBC legal director Sarah Jones said she “wished” she had spoken to Earl Spencer in 2020 before the crisis hit.
Had he been shown documents that exposed the deception at the heart of the corporation, he may not have taken the steps that led to the explosive investigation.
She told a court hearing: “I accept there should have been some consultation with Earl Spencer.” If we had, events would have developed very differently. I wish we had shown it to him, but we didn’t.
Princes William and Harry publicly chastised the corporation in 2021 after Lord Dyson exposed how Bashir had tricked his mother into giving his famous Panorama interview (pictured above) and how senior executives had covered up his devious tricks.
Yesterday, BBC legal director Sarah Jones said she “wishes” she had spoken to Earl Spencer (pictured) in 2020 before the crisis hit.
Bashir (pictured) had spun a web of deception to deceive Diana and her brother with absurd smears about senior royals to gain their trust. He used falsified bank statements to back up his lies.
Ms Jones, general counsel of the BBC group, denied any cover-up during her evidence before a Freedom of Information tribunal.
It is carried out by a dossier of Bashir’s internal emails that the BBC published but with many passages deleted by the pen of a censor.
Activists, including Earl Spencer, believe the redacted passages mean the broadcaster is hiding potentially explosive revelations. The BBC insists that the words behind the redactions only show “irrelevant” personal information.
He has wasted almost £500,000 in a legal battle to keep the dossier secret, fighting a freedom of information request from journalist and filmmaker Andy Webb for three years.
At the hearing in central London, Webb accused the BBC of a “callous and shameful” cover-up in 2020.
He said executives had made a “huge effort” to prevent the story of what happened in 1996 from coming to light, stating: “The BBC thought, ‘We’re in a hole,’ and decided to throw sand in people’s faces.” who were looking at that.” hole.’
The tranche of internal emails corresponds to a three-month period in autumn 2020, when the BBC, under director general Tim Davie, was defusing the Bashir crisis.
In October that year, the Mail revealed shocking details of how Bashir had lied and managed to get his 1995 Panorama interview in which the princess declared that “there are three of us in this marriage”.
But Bashir had spun a web of deception to deceive Diana and her brother with absurd smears about senior royals to gain their trust. He used falsified bank statements to back up his lies.
In 2020, the BBC released files from 1996 containing a false allegation that Earl Spencer was complicit in the falsified statements.
The earl was so outraged that he revealed his own files to the Mail exposing Bashir’s duplicity and triggering the Dyson investigation.
The BBC’s Monica Carss-Frisk, KC, told the court: ‘The BBC cannot be blamed. What you have from Mr. Webb is nothing beyond speculation. ‘He is making very serious accusations on a speculative basis.’
The case continues.