The British Broadcasting Corporation has donated £1.42 million to charities once supported by the late Diana, Princess of Wales in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding the infamous 1995 Panorama interview.
In a statement on Friday, the BBC wrote: “The BBC had indicated its intention to donate to charity the sales proceeds derived from the 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales. The BBC has now done so. Given the findings of Lord Dyson, we think this is the right and appropriate course of action.”
All of these proceeds stem from any commercial use fees, and not from the BBC’s licensing fees.
The BBC split the funds equally between the following charities: Centrepoint, the English National Ballet, the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, the Leprosy Mission, the National AIDS Trust, the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, and The Diana Award.
In May 2021, the findings of a commission chaired by Lord Dyson found that Diana’s infamous interview to BBC journalist Martin Bashir, in which she admitted to infidelity and revealed that there were ‘three of us’ in her marriage, among other revelations, was procured by deceitful methods and that BBC leadership at the time was complicit in covering up Bashir’s actions.
The BBC’s current news director, Tim Davie, said last year: “While today’s BBC has significantly better processes and procedures, those that existed at the time should have prevented the interview being secured in this way. The BBC should have made greater effort to get to the bottom of what happened at the time and been more transparent about what it knew. While the BBC cannot turn back the clock after a quarter of a century, we can make a full and unconditional apology. The BBC offers that today.”
In a statement at the time the Dyson Report findings were published, Prince William said: “[W]hat saddens me most, is that if the BBC had properly investigated the complaints and concerns first raised in 1995, my mother would have known that she had been deceived. She was failed not just by a rogue reporter, but by leaders at the BBC who looked the other way rather than asking the tough questions.
“It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again. It effectively established a false narrative which, for over a quarter of a century, has been commercialised by the BBC and others.”
