![]() In a statement, Hall told BBC radio that the original investigation had focused on whether the princess had been misled, and that the corporation’s new inquiry would doubtless look at this alongside any new issues raised. His contract was not renewed, and he ultimately left the industry when work dried up, he said. “I quite clearly felt that I was the one that was going to be the fall guy in this story,” Wiessler said. Matt Wiessler, the graphic designer who mocked up documents allegedly used to secure a 1995 BBC Panorama interview with the Princess of Wales, who has said he was made a scapegoat by the BBC. But after an unsatisfying confrontation with Bashir, he ultimately spoke to a journalist, which helped set off the first inquiry. When he approached BBC managers about his concerns, he said, he was cautioned not to speak to the media. He said that he did not know what they were used for until the interview aired. He went on to claim that Bashir had asked him to mock up bank statements to be used as props for “filming purposes.” Speaking publicly for the first time, Wiessler said in an interview for the ITV documentary that the internal documents made it clear that he had been used as a scapegoat. Internal documents obtained in a Freedom of Information request by journalist Andy Webb, who directed a documentary about the interview for another British network, Channel 4, show that Hall cleared Bashir while punishing a graphic designer, Matthias Wiessler, who produced the altered bank statements.Īccording to the documents, reported in the ITV documentary, Hall said that while Bashir was “an honest man” who was “deeply remorseful,” Wiessler would never work at the BBC again because he had spoken to the media about the events. Hall himself later went on to lead the BBC, retiring as its director general in August this year. The BBC ordered an investigation into allegations of impropriety in 1996, and Bashir was cleared of wrongdoing by the corporation’s news chief at the time, Tony Hall. The interview was conducted without the blessing of Queen Elizabeth II and enraged Buckingham Palace, leading the royal family to reconsider its relationship with the nation’s public broadcaster. On the weekend it aired, Bashir went into hiding to avoid the crush of media. Neither the BBC nor Bashir immediately offered further comment. The BBC has reported that he has been recovering from quadruple heart bypass surgery and complications from COVID-19, which he contracted earlier in the year. “We are in the process of commissioning a robust and independent investigation.” Bashir, now the religion editor of BBC News, has in the past faced questions about the tactics he used to secure the interview, only to be exonerated in an earlier BBC internal investigation, and has been unable to respond to the latest allegations because he is sick. “The BBC is taking this very seriously, and we want to get to the truth,” Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, said Monday. The British Broadcasting Corporation, which aired the interview on its Panorama program and sold international rights for £1.35 million, announced that it would open an independent investigation into the allegations. Specifically, the documentary claims that doctored bank statements - purportedly proving that royal employees close to the princess were being paid for spying on her - were used to gain Diana’s trust. ![]() But this week, old questions about how Bashir secured the interview have resurfaced in a two-part documentary that aired on the British network ITV on Monday and Tuesday, including allegations that Bashir used dishonest tactics to earn Diana’s trust and persuade her into the interview. Hailed by British journalists at the time as “the scoop of the century,” it was viewed by an estimated 23 million people and catapulted her BBC interviewer, Martin Bashir, to an international profile. The extraordinarily candid interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1995 - in which she spoke of her "crowded" marriage to Prince Charles, admitted an affair of her own and told how in her despair she suffered from "rampant bulimia" - rocked England.
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