BBC probes charges reporter faked papers to get iconic Princess Diana interview

Diana’s brother says journalist Martin Bashir showed him false bank documents in a bid to get him to believe palace officials were conspiring against her

The BBC promised Monday to launch a comprehensive investigation into allegations that one of its reporters lied and fabricated documents in order to secure what became an iconic 1995 interview with Princess Diana.

“We are in the process of commissioning a robust and independent investigation,” said BBC Director-General Tim Davie, adding that the news organization was “taking this very seriously and we want to get to the truth.”

The allegations that reporter Martin Bashir fabricated documents to gain the trust of Diana’s family were made in a documentary by the UK’s Channel 4 that aired last month called “Diana: The Truth Behind the Interview,” and in comments made last week by Diana’s brother Charles Spencer to the Daily Mail.

Spencer said Bashir, then a young, relatively unknown journalist with the BBC’s Panorama, had shown him falsified bank statements indicating that palace officials were selling information about his sister, in the hope of getting an introduction.

Spencer said Bashir made it appear that Diana’s private correspondence was being opened, her car tracked and phones tapped. Bashir, he said, also claimed that her bodyguard was plotting against her and close friends were betraying her by leaking stories to the press.

Spencer said he never would have introduced Bashir to his sister without seeing the faked bank statements.

The eventual interview made huge headlines, attracting some 23 million viewers. In it, Diana, who was separated at the time from Prince Charles, famously said, “There were three of us in this marriage,” referring to Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, whom he later married.

The Channel 4 documentary featured an interview with a graphic designer who said he had been commissioned by Bashir to make the fake documents and blamed the BBC for using him as a scapegoat in the scandal.

The BBC said Bashir, who is now its religious affairs correspondent, was unavailable for comment after “undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery and has significant complications from having contracted Covid-19 earlier in the year.”

Diana died in 1997, aged 36, in a car crash in Paris.