Anomalous

The catalyst for the final explosion of l'affaire Bashir was the application of the Freedom of Information Act. 

In 2007, Andy Webb, a freelance journalist, made a Freedom of Information enquiry for any documents relating to the internal investigation into Bashir's conduct in securing the interview with Princess Diana, back in 1995. He thought, perhaps it could provide the basis for a stage play or even a film.  

He was told there were no documents on file: "Any meetings to discuss this particular programme would not have been minuted and the number of people involved in the process kept to a need-to-know basis only."  Mr Webb said, with his experience as a former BBC reporter, this had to be wrong, but he let it lie. 

He tried again during lockdown, with a view to a Channel 4 documentary on the 25th anniversary of the Panorama interview.  Two days before transmission, he suddenly got a dump of  67 documents, with the message from the BBC "Now that we have looked in to this, we have concluded that the 2007 request is anomalous. We are of course going back 13 years, but it seems from the way the response to you is written that the conclusion then was based on supposition, rather than established fact. We should have taken steps to ascertain whether relevant information was held."

This 'dump' came within 20 minutes of the answer from the BBC Press Office to Webb's request for a comment on the documentary.

"To me, that suggested a very close relationship between press office and FoI office. As I understand it, they must really have separate roles. The press office is quite entitled to spin as much as it likes – nobody can blame them for that, that’s what they’re there for…

“As I understand it, the Freedom of Information Office – the clue is in the name – is about making information free. And if that information was released to a PR brief then that seems to me simply wrong.”

In 2007, the Director General of the BBC was Mark Thompson; the Director of News was Helen Boaden; Sally Osman was in charge of communications. 

In October 2020, the DG was Tim Davie; the Director of News Fran Unsworth, and John Shield was in charge of communications.  Top information rights lawyer: Simon Morrissey, formely of Eversheds.