The BBC's director-general has vowed that the corporation will never again broadcast Princess Diana's 1995 Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. Tim Davie said he had made the decision in light of the "shocking" way her participation was secured.
Bashir faked bank statements and showed them to Earl Spencer, Diana's brother, in order to gain access to the princess, an inquiry by Lord Dyson found. The journalist was in "serious breach" of the BBC's guidelines, a report said, with the corporation proceeding to cover up their reporter's "deceitful behaviour" in a way that "fell short of high standards of integrity and transparency."
Tim Davie said: “Now we know about the shocking way that the interview was obtained, I have decided that the BBC will never show the programme again; nor will we license it in whole or part to other broadcasters. It does of course remain part of the historical record and there may be occasions in the future when it will be justified for the BBC to use short extracts for journalistic purposes.
"But these will be few and far between and will need to be agreed at executive committee level and set in the full context of what we now know about the way the interview was obtained. I would urge others to exercise similar restraint.”
It comes as the Duke of Cambridge’s former nanny Alexandra Pettifer, better known as Tiggy Legge-Bourke, received substantial damages from the BBC over "false and malicious" allegations used to obtain the interview. Ms Legge-Bourke appeared at the High Court in London on Thursday for a public apology from the broadcaster over "fabricated" allegations she had had an affair with the Prince of Wales while working as Charles’s personal assistant in 1995.
The BBC has previously agreed to pay Diana’s private secretary Patrick Jephson a “substantial sum” in damages. Panorama producer Mark Killick was also awarded a payment.
The BBC broadcast clips from the interview again last May in a documentary explaining how Bashir persuaded Diana to be interviewed. The landmark programme, in which the princess commented on her marriage to Prince Charles was watched by 23 million people.
After the Dyson report was published, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, called for the Panorama episode to be blocked from future broadcast. "It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again," he said.
"It effectively established a false narrative which, for over a quarter of a century, has been commercialised by the BBC and others. This settled narrative now needs to be addressed by the BBC and anyone else who has written or intends to write about these events.
"In an era of fake news, public service broadcasting and a free press have never been more important. These failings, identified by investigative journalists, not only let my mother down, and my family down; they let the public down too."
