Among the many remarkable elements of Lord Dyson's analysis of what went wrong at the BBC during 1995 and 1996 is that former executives, as late as February this year, were simply not smelling the coffee that the retired judge was brewing.
Whilst his report is that of an experienced barrister and judge, you can see that, in the questioning, he gives Lord Hall, Anne Sloman and Lord Birt, extra opportunities to explain why they never sought to talk directly to Viscount Althorp, and reports that with some relish. He reserves his most masterful put-down for Lord Birt, who clearly made the mistake of bandying words with the former Master of the Rolls about "the lack of counterfactuals".
Some brief context. Lord Birt, as John Birt, ran BBC News from 1987, and moved up to DG in 1992. At News in 1987, Birt swiftly skipped a generation of news executives, elevating Tony Hall to Editor TV News and Current Affairs at the age of 36. From 1990, Hall ran both tv and radio news - delivering on Birt's bi-media strategy.
The bedrock of the Birtian approach to journalism was the Birt-Jay thesis, that TV news had an inbuilt 'bias against understaning'. Audiences needed whole suites of additional programming to properly grasp the issues behind the headlines; the BBC needed a new raft of hugely-brainy specialist correspondents to provide analysis that would make things clear.
Birt also brought a new diversity imperative to the BBC, appointing former LWT colleague Samir Shah to his management team. Martin Bashir, a freelance sports journalist, was a beneficiary, given runs on Songs of Praise alongside joining the Public Eye team as a reporter in 1989. Public Eye was a weekly show on BBC2, looking at UK 'issues' week by week. Largely dull and unwatched.
In 1992, Martin Bashir joined the Panorama team, under editor Glenwyn Benson. He made programmes about child offenders, Aldermaston, post-natal depression, and school expulsions. In 1995, the Panorama team was invigorated by the arrival of plain-talking populist Steve Hewlett as Editor.
Imagine the joy at BBC News HQ when Panorama reported, quietly, that they'd got an extended interview with the Princess of Wales - proof positive that Birtian journalism could deliver scoops as well as serious stuff. Whilst Lord Birt, as DG, kept BBC Chairman Marmaduke Hussey in the dark, Steve Hewlett and his team hired a hotel suite in Eastbourne, to edit two and a half hours down to an hour. A fleet of BBC ZiLs came down to watch the close-to-final roughcut. Steve Hewlett takes up the story:
"On a November morning in 1995, the BBC's then director of news, Tony Hall, and his closest confidant Richard Ayre – controller of editorial policy – travelled to Eastbourne to watch a rough cut of a Panorama programme they knew could quite possibly wreck the monarchy and, if mishandled, certainly wreck the BBC. They sat in a suite full of TV editing kit at the Grand Hotel, along with the head of current affairs, Tim Gardam, head of communications for BBC News, Richard Peel, producer Mike Robinson, the picture editor, and the programme editor – me – watching Martin Bashir's interview with Princess Diana."
This triumph, and this team, then faced six months in which their triumph looked close to crumbling. Severe damage limitation was the name of the game, and a narrative which kept the lid on what really happened was created, and stuck to, until Lord Dyson's probe. Two forged bank statements, with concocted fantasy payments from spooks and tabloids, became 'graphic mock-ups, never intended for broadcast' and of 'no influence' in securing the interview. Tim Gardam drafted a disciplinary letter; it was never sent. Martin Bashir was allowed little lies for which he was contrite, and deemed a basically honest chap. Those who continued to blow whistles were deliberately bad-mouthed and 'let go'.
Because they'd lost their moral imperative, Bashir's internal investigators tolerated the nonsense answer that he'd spent programme budget on the forgeries, but couldn't really remember why. No investigation team bothered to write down a timeline of events, which would have demonstrated how Bashir twisted and turned in his answers, way beyond the little lies.
It would be good to have a fuller record of the management conversations in that Eastbourne hotel. Most BBC hacks, when they heard that Bashir had got the Princess asked "How on earth did he pull that off ?". This turned out to be the right question, finally pursued by a former judge. If Richard Ayre had dug deeper at the time, he's been clear Martin Bashir would have been sacked for the breach of editorial guidelines - something his confidante, Tony Hall didn't even consider in 1996.
So why wouldn't the BBC re-employ Martin Bashir as Religious Editor ? Whatever minor infringements of journalistic ethics he'd committed at the BBC (and in the USA) were surely now expunged from the record over time. Jonathan Munro, at Newsgathering, could add an experienced and diverse face to his team - no need to check with Lord Hall surely ?
