Diana scandal hid in plain sight for 24 years

Why we finally decided Bashir’s Panorama tactics mattered

- Jonathan Maitland j

THERE was only one surprising thing about the Martin Bashir Panorama scandal of 2020: which is that anyone was surprised at all. Because we'd heard it all before. Twenty-four years before.

The meat of the story - that Bashir forged bank statements which helped secure his now infamous TV interview with Princess Diana in 1995- had been splashed all over the front page of the Mail on Sunday in April 1996. But back then, no one seemed to care.

That 1996 front page splash by investigative reporters Jason Lewis and Nick Fielding was headlined "DIANA'S BBC MAN AND FAKE BANK STATEMENTS".

And the scoop was - give or take a few relatively minor details - essentially the same as the one which shocked so many in 2020.

This time round, though, the retelling of it ignited a global media scandal which led to the career-ruining (for Bashir and former BBC director-general Tony Hall) Dyson Report about Bashir and the subsequent BBC cover-up.

All of which begs a fascinating question: why was it such a huge scandal this time round, but virtually ignored a quarter of a century ago? The most important factor, I think, is that our attitude to trust changed in those intervening years.