BBC deceived Princess Diana to obtain infamous interview that contributed to her death

Over in America we can comment on this most recent revelation in Britain without restraint.

Don’t give the BBC any pity now for finally accepting the failings of their past. They deserve the same amount of scorn now that they did in the first place with the late Princess Diana.

An independent investigation establishes that BBC Panorama journalist Martin Bashir used fake documents and lies to secure a 1995 interview with Diana. According to the transcript of the interview, Bashir pried into the most intimate aspects of Princess Diana’s life: from her mental health, trying to balance raising a family while being a royal, and the constant media pressure therein.

Bashir also prodded about Diana’s marriage and how Prince Charles was having an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles. It’s noted that the BBC interview is infamous because Diana said they were “three of us in this marriage” before separating from Charles.

Prince William uploaded this video condemning the BBC for their failings. In a statement from his brother, Prince Harry, the same sentiment of disdain for the outlet’s failures is expressed.

“I’d like to thank Lord Dyson and his team for the report. It is welcomed that the BBC accepts Lord Dyson’s findings in full, which are extremely concerning. That BBC employees lied and used fake documents to obtain an interview with my mother, [silence] made lurid and false claims about the Royal family, which played on her fears and fueled paranoia. Displayed woeful incompetence when investigating complaints and concerns about the programme, and were invasive in their reporting to the media, and covered up from what they knew in their internal investigation.”

ITV has an article up with the evidence given to the Dyson inquiry, including the fake documents in question.

Princess Diana made the best of her fame by bringing social awareness to causes like the AIDs epidemic of the 1980s. Her public display of humanity towards patients with the disease broke down a cultural stigma of othering against AIDs patients at the time.

“It is my view that the deceitful way the interview was obtained, substantially influenced what my mother said. The interview was a major contribution to making my parent’s relationship worse, and has since hurt countless others. 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.”

In the BBC’s own article on the matter they declared their own 1996 probe “woefully ineffective,” they wrote apologies to Princes Charles and Diana’s brother Earl Spencer, and they’re returning all the awards the interview initially won.

“But what saddens me most is that if the BBC properly investigated the complaints and concerns, first raised in 1995, my mother would’ve known she’d been deceived. She was failed not just by a rogue reporter, but by leaders of the BBC who looked the other way, rather than asking the tough questions.”

For all the contempt and scorn the British establishment threw at Tommy Robinson, the Dyson inquiry’s findings confirm Robinson’s and Lucy Brown’s suspicions about the corruption at the BBC.

“It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again. It effectively established a false narrative, which for over a quarter of a century has been commercialized 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.”

Princess Diana died in August 1997 after being pursued by the paparazzi. Diana’s brother Earl Spencer blames the BBC Panorama interview for causing her death because the aftermath of it caused Diana to get cut off by key people that could’ve protected her.