The BBC said on Thursday it has paid a “substantial sum” and apologised to Princess Diana’s former private secretary over a bombshell 1995 interview found to have been obtained using deception.
An independent report by senior judge John Dyson last year concluded interviewer Martin Bashir tricked Diana’s brother into helping to arrange the interview, in which she spoke candidly about her troubled marriage to Prince Charles.
“The BBC and Commander Patrick Jephson have reached a settlement following publication of the Dyson report,” the BBC said in a statement.
Jephson, who aided Diana from 1988 to 1996, reportedly said Bashir “seduced and betrayed” her into agreeing to the interview, which sent shock-waves through the royal family.
“The BBC accepts and acknowledges that serious harm was caused to Commander Jephson as a result of the circumstances in which the 1995 interview … was obtained,” the broadcaster said.
Dyson concluded that Bashir commissioned fake bank statements that falsely suggested some of Diana’s closest aides were being paid by the security services to keep tabs on her.
He then showed them to Charles Spencer in a successful bid to earn their trust and land the sensa-tional sit-down, in which Diana admitted adultery with a former army officer, James Hewitt, and de-tailed Charles’ affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.
“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana famously told Bashir in the programme, which was watched by a UK audi-ence of nearly 23 million people.
The BBC “apologises unreservedly to Com-mander Jephson for the harm caused to him”, has paid his legal costs and “a substantial sum in dam-ages”. The broadcaster said Jephson intends to do-nate the damages to charity.
The BBC has previously apologised and reached an agreement with a graphic designer who was side-lined for blowing the whistle on the underhand methods used.
Bashir asked Matt Wiessler to mock up docu-ments that were shown to Spencer, who wrote on Twitter on Thursday that the settlement with Jephson was “the right result”.—AFP
