Fri 21 May 2021:
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “very concerned” about the findings of the official report which found TV journalist Martin Bashir behaved deceitfully to land his BBC interview with Princess Diana.
Johnson called on the BBC on Friday to avoid repeating the mistakes the public broadcaster made in 1995, when according to a recently published independent inquiry, one of its journalists used deceitful methods to obtain an interview with the now-late Princess Diana.
“I’m obviously concerned by the findings of Lord Dyson’s report …I can only image the feelings of the royal family and I hope very much that the BBC will be taking every possible step to make sure nothing like this ever happens again,” Johnson told reporters during a visit to the new HMS Queen Elizabeth II aircraft carrier in Portsmouth, England.
The investigation led by retired judge and peer John Dyson on how the broadcaster got its explosive 1995 interview found that tv journalist Martin Bashir behaved in a “deceitful way” and used “fake documents” to coerce Princess Diana to agree to be interviewed.
BBC NAMES EX-JUDGE TO LEAD PROBE INTO EXPLOSIVE 1995 DIANA INTERVIEW
The report also criticized the BBC for conducting a “woefully ineffective” probe into the interview in 1996.
Following the publication of Lord Dyson’s report on Thursday, Prince William accused the public broadcaster of having caused irrevocable damage to his mother, who during the bombshell interview shocked the whole country by admitting to an affair and sharing details of her marriage to the heir to the throne and father of her two sons, Prince Charles.
“The interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse and has since hurt countless others,” the Duke of Cambridge said in a statement.
A former chair of the BBC, Michael Grade, meanwhile described Prince William’s criticism of the BBC as “unprecedented” and called for “serious structural change” within the corporation.
The Metropolitan Police, which had previously declined to conduct a criminal investigation into the issue, said on Friday that it will assess the contents of the report to make sure that there is no significant new evidence.
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