Ex-BBC boss Tony Hall ‘sorry for hurt’ to royals over Martin Bashir’s 1995 Princess Diana interview
Former BBC boss Tony Hall has apologised to the royal family for the scandal around the 1995 Martin Bashir interview with Princess Diana.
At the time, Lord Hall investigated Bashir’s faking of bank documents after questions arose about whether Bashir used them to get the royal interview.
“I trusted a journalist. I gave him a second chance. We, the team, gave him a second chance, and that trust was abused and was misplaced,” Lord Hall told a committee of MPs on Tuesday.
Lord Hall’s investigation at the time concluded that Bashir was an “honest and an honourable man.”
But a recent report by Lord Dyson criticised Bashir’s “deceitful” actions and Lord Hall’s “woefully ineffective” investigation.
After the Dyson Report was published, Diana’s son Prince William said “the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation.”
He said: “She was failed not just by a rogue reporter, but by leaders at the BBC who looked the other way rather than asking the tough questions.”
Lord Hall said on Tuesday that Bashir had ended up “contrite and in tears” when he interviewed him about the matter at the time.
“He appeared to us that he was contrite, inexperienced and out of his depth and that is why in the end rather than sacking him, and I can see the reasons for that, he was given a second chance,” he said.
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