Topic: Ex-BBC boss Tony Hall: Wrong not to sack Bashir after Diana interview
Ex-BBC boss Tony Hall: Wrong not to sack Bashir after Diana interview
A former BBC director general has เข้าslotxo said it was the "wrong judgement" in hindsight not to sack Martin Bashir over his behaviour in the run-up to his 1995 interview with Princess Diana.
At the time, Tony Hall investigated Bashir's faking of bank documents over questions about whether the reporter had used them to secure the scoop.
He told a committee of MPs: "We trusted him and we clearly shouldn't have."
Committee chairman Julian Knight said there had been "a failure of morality".
Lord Hall was head of news at the time of the princess's explosive interview, and his subsequent investigation concluded that Bashir was an "honest and an honourable man".
He told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee on Tuesday that he knew he had been lied to on multiple occasions by Bashir when he conducted the internal investigation in 1996.
He said Bashir had ended up "contrite and in tears" when he "quizzed him really, really hard" about the matter at the time.
"He appeared to us that he was contrite, inexperienced and out of his depth and that is why in the end rather than sacking him, and I can see the reasons for that, he was given a second chance."
Bashir admitted to his bosses that the statements had been mocked up, but repeatedly denied showing them to Diana's brother Earl Spencer.
He had done, and Earl Spencer has said Bashir was trying to "groom" him in order to get to his sister. It was Bashir's first breach of the BBC's guidelines, Lord Hall explained.