Cover up

If we move on from the core conclusion that Martin Bashir lied about how he had secured the interview with Princess of Diana, Lord Dyson neatly encapsulates the guts of the problem for Lord Hall and his 1996 investigation, without mincing his words...  

The investigation conducted by Lord Hall and Mrs Sloman was woefully ineffective for the following reasons: 

(i) they failed to interview Earl Spencer: this was a big mistake and the points they (and Lord Birt, the former Director-General) have made to justify their not doing so are rejected; 

(ii) they did not scrutinise Mr Bashir’s account with the necessary degree of scepticism and caution: they knew he had lied three times when he said that he had not shown the fake statements to Earl Spencer (these were serious lies for which he gave no explanation); they knew that he been unable to provide any credible explanation of why he had commissioned the fake statements (which was a serious breach of the BBC’s Producers’ Guidelines on straight dealing); and they knew that Mr Bashir’s account of what happened was largely uncorroborated; 

and (iii) without knowing Earl Spencer’s version of the facts; without receiving from Mr Bashir a credible explanation of what he had done and why he had done it; and in the light of his serious and unexplained lies, Lord Hall could not reasonably have concluded, as he did, that Mr Bashir was an honest and honourable man. 

Without justification, the BBC fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark by (i) covering up in its press logs such facts as it had been able to establish about how Mr Bashir secured the interview; and (ii) failing to mention Mr Bashir’s activities or the BBC investigations of them on any news programme.