The BBC promises to re-investigate the 1995 televised interview with Princess Diana. Her brother Earl Spencer claims that journalist Martin Bashir lied to persuade her to do an interview and that this caused her to make statements about her in front of the camera. Prince Charles’s marriage and affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
According to director Tim Davie, the BBC is taking the matter very seriously . “We are in the process of starting a large independent investigation.” However, the matter is somewhat “complicated” since Bashir is currently seriously ill with complications related to the corona virus. Bashir is currently serving as the religion editor for BBC News .
According to Spencer, bank statements were forged to pretend that people from the British court had been bribed. The statements falsely claimed that two courtiers were paid by the security services for information about Diana and Prince Charles. This would have made Diana more likely to appear in front of Panaroma ‘s cameras and tell her story. In the famous and controversial interview, the princess said that “the three of them were married,” referring to Prince Charles’s relationship with Parker-Bowles. Diana and Charles were separated at the time, but not yet divorced.
Now Spencer has handed the BBC a file of evidence that would shed new light on the tactic employed by the reporter. “I am now formally asking the BBC to investigate this matter, and I hope, among many other issues to be addressed, that it will answer the most important questions,” Spencer wrote in a letter to Davie, saying. Daily Mail .
The BBC already investigated the interview in 1996. Then an apology was made for the fake bank statements but it was concluded that the statements were not used to get the interview with Diana.
‘They have not yet apologized for cheating’
Spencer says he does not agree with these apologies. “When the BBC says they ‘apologized’ to me, they have apologized for the false bank statements they showed me pertaining to an unrelated matter, Diana’s brother said Wednesday. “They have not apologized for the false bank statements and other deception that led me to introduce Bashir to my sister.”
The interview was her first solo interview and was seen as controversial by the topics discussed. They discussed her self-harm, her eating disorder, her own affair and infidelity to Charles and his affair with Parker-Bowles. Diana also spoke of the lack of support she felt from the royal family and her doubts about Charles’s future as King of England.
Diana married Prince Charles in 1981 and they divorced in the early 1990s. In 2005 the prince married Parker-Bowles. Diana died on August 31, 1997 after a car accident in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris.