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LONDON — It was the biggest "get" of its day, when a young and mostly unknown BBC journalist named Martin Bashir got a jaw-dropping interview in 1995 with Princess Diana, who sensationally confessed to her misery in her marriage to Prince Charles, saying it led to her bulimia, self-harm and the couple's extramarital affairs.

Now, all these years later, an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports" title="www.bbc.co.uk">independent investigation</a> released Thursday concludes that Bashir used fake documents and “deceitful behaviour” in engineering a crucial meeting that led to the interview, viewed at the time as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/03/07/princess-diana-harry-meghan-oprah-interview/">journalistic triumph</a>, winning 23 million viewers in Britain alone and a shelf lined with awards.

Diana’s son Prince William said Bashir’s deceits “substantially influenced” what his mother said in the interview about Charles and the palace.

“The interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse and has since hurt countless others,” William said in a statement Thursday, unusual for its intensity.

“It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her,” he said.

The interview created a false narrative and should never be aired again, the prince said.


<i>[Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah stunned. But it’s unlikely to change the British monarchy.]</i>


BBC Chairman Richard Sharp said Thursday that the organization “unreservedly accepted” the report’s findings, which showed “unacceptable failures.” Management should have made more effort “to get to the bottom of what happened” during its own internal probe in 1996.

Former BBC director general John Birt branded Bashir, a former star, “a rogue reporter” and called the report “shocking.” He added that “it is a matter of the greatest regret that it has taken 25 years for the full truth to emerge.”

Bashir last week <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57120603">retired from the BBC</a> at age 58, citing health reasons.

The BBC said it will now return all awards the interview won and that it has written “personal apologies” to Diana’s sons, William and Harry, to Charles and to Diana’s brother.

Tim Graham

The six-month inquiry, done at the behest of the BBC and carried out by former British Supreme Court judge John Dyson, is scathing in its conclusions, not only about Bashir’s sketchy tactics, but the BBC’s failure to uphold its gold-plated reputation.

The former judge found that Bashir carried out a sophisticated ruse and lied to his bosses about it, and that the BBC, having been alerted to his behavior, mostly papered over it and sought to evade scrutiny on the topic.

Dyson concludes that Bashir tricked Diana’s brother, <a href="https://twitter.com/cspencer1508/status/1395302042600714242?s=20">Charles Spencer</a>, into introducing the journalist to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/11/16/the-crown-princess-diana-bulimia/">troubled princess</a>.

Bashir told Spencer he was working on a story on the news media’s bad behavior and showed Spencer fake bank statements, unwittingly created by a BBC graphic designer, that suggested that a member of Spencer’s security team was being paid by newspapers for information.

Spencer claimed to investigators that Bashir did this “to groom me, so that he could then get to Diana for the interview he was always secretly after.”

The first bank documents were essentially the bait, Spencer told Dyson. Soon afterward, Bashir set the hook by showing Spencer a second set of false bank statements suggesting that two palace insiders had also received payments from the media<span> — specifically Diana’s private secretary, Patrick Jephson, and Charles’s private secretary, Richard Aylard</span>.

“It is likely that these statements were created by Mr. Bashir and contained information that he had fabricated,” the report states.

After showing Spencer the fake bank statements, Bashir induced him to arrange a meeting with Diana. “By gaining access to Princess Diana in this way, Mr. Bashir was able to persuade her to agree to give the interview,” Dyson wrote, calling such behavior a “serious breach” of the BBC’s guidelines on “straight dealing.”

In a statement, Bashir said creating false documents “was a stupid thing to do” but not very important. “The bank statements had no bearing whatsoever on the personal choice by Princess Diana to take part in the interview,” Bashir said.

Bashir said he was still “immensely proud” of the interview.

Nick Wass

“Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana famously told Bashir, speaking of Charles and his long-running affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, now his wife.

Soon after the interview aired, at the queen’s urging, Charles and Diana divorced. Diana died in a high-speed car crash in a Paris tunnel in 1997 while being <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/whats-up-with-the-next-generation-of-britains-royals/2017/08/27/ec5f59e6-882f-11e7-96a7-d178cf3524eb_story.html">chased by paparazzi</a> on motorcycles.

In his report, Dyson notes that at the time of the BBC interview, Diana was especially “vulnerable.” She told her solicitor that there was a conspiracy to get “rid of her,” either in a staged car accident or by portraying her as “unbalanced.”

“Mr. Bashir would have little difficulty in playing on her fears and paranoia,” Dyson wrote.

In a Thursday statement, Prince Harry contended: “What deeply concerns me is that practices like these — and even worse — are still widespread today.”

“Our mother lost her life because of this, and nothing has changed,” he said.

But Dyson suggests by the summer of 1995, Diana “was keen on the idea of a television interview,” because Charles had recently aired his side of things.

Diana “would probably have agreed to be interviewed by any experienced and reputable reporter in whom she had confidence even without the intervention of Mr. Bashir,” Dyson writes.

And in fact, in a previously unpublished handwritten letter to BBC editors soon after the Bashir interview aired, Diana wrote she consented without pressure and “have no regrets.”

The princess underlined the word “no.”

Overseas Press Club, Kim Wall Award, "Occupied," 2018

 Overseas Press Club, Robert Spiers Benjamn Award Citation, "Mexico's Middle Class," 2012  

Overseas Press Club, Robert Spiers Benjamin Award Citation, "Mexico at War," 2010

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize, Breaking News, "Fort Hood Shooting," 2010

University of Texas at Austin, literature 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vannevar Bush Fellow

William Booth is The Washington Post’s London bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Jerusalem, Mexico City, Los Angeles and Miami.

William Booth

The Washington Post

BBC's Martin Bashir used 'deceitful behaviour' to secure 1995 Princess Diana interview, investigation concludes

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