The headlines are all too familiar. The BBC has been exposed as having deeply unsatisfactory internal processes for investigating problems. Rival media organisations gloat over the inadequacies. Loyal BBC employees squirm with embarrassment. We have seen it all before.
The issue this time is the notorious interview with Princess Diana 25 years ago, conducted by Martin Bashir, a junior reporter on the BBC’s flagship weekly current affairs programme, Panorama. The interview attracted 23 million viewers. But a retired Supreme Court judge, Lord Dyson, has just issued a devastating verdict on how the interview was secured – indirectly, by deceit and trickery – and on how the internal inquiry into that deceit, once it was exposed, was handled – in a “woefully ineffective” fashion. Dyson came close to accusing the BBC of orchestrating a cover-up of Bashir’s misdeeds.
Dyson’s remit did not include two other relevant issues. First, why BBC managers chose to ignore their settled protocol on how to seek royal interviews. Second, why Bashir was re-hired by the BBC as a religious affairs correspondent long after the facts of his deception in obtaining the Diana interview had become known, not least to the man who had investigated his behaviour in 1995 and was BBC director-general at the time of Bashir’s return.
