The BBC has agreed to pay substantial damage to former royal babysitter Tiggy Legge-Bourke after false accusations were used that she had an affair with Prince Charles to get Martin Bashir’s interview with Diana, Princess of Wales in 1995.
Legge-Bourke’s attorney, Louise Prince, told the high court that the allegations caused “serious personal consequences for all concerned.”
In addition to the allegation in the case, the court was told that Legge-Bourke was falsely accused of getting pregnant with Charles’ baby and having an abortion.
Prince said Legge-Bourke, now known as Alexandra Pettifer, had not known the source of the allegations for the past 25 years, but that it is now likely that the “false and malicious allegations arose as a result and in context of BBC Panorama’s efforts to get an exclusive interview with Diana, Princess of Wales ”.
Bashir is supposed to have spread the false accusations in his successful attempt to gain Diana’s trust and convince her to sit in Panorama’s interview. In an effort to gain access to the princess, the journalist also created fake bank statements and suggested that people close to Diana were selling stories in the newspapers.
Originally hailed as one of the greatest journalistic publications of all time, with Diana sharing the details of her failed relationship with Prince Charles in front of tens of millions of people, the Panorama interview is now considered so toxic that the CEO of the BBC’s Tim Davie has pledged never to show it again.
Davie apologized again to the royal family on Thursday for the “deceptive tactics” used by the BBC in the search for his interview and “for the way Princess Diana was deceived and the subsequent impact on all of her vides “.
He said it was a matter of regret that the BBC did not properly pursue the allegations about the interview when they were first made in the 1990s.
“If we had done our job correctly, Princess Diana would have known the truth during her lifetime. We disappoint her, the royal family and our audience.
“Now that we know how shocking the interview was, I have decided that the BBC will never show the show again; nor will we authorize it in whole or in part to other stations.
“Of course, it is still part of the historical record and there may be occasions in the future where it is justified for the BBC to use short excerpts for journalistic purposes, but these will be few and will have to be done. set in the full context of what we now know about how the interview was obtained. I urge others to exercise the same moderation. “
The deal with Pettifer was announced Thursday in high court. He became a public figure during the 1990s while caring for the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex as children during the period when his parents divorced.
In a statement, Pettifer said: “I am disappointed that I needed legal action for the BBC to acknowledge the serious damage I have been subjected to. Unfortunately, I am one of many people whose lives have been marked by deceptive behavior. with which the BBC Panorama was made and the subsequent failure of the BBC to properly investigate the making of the program.
“The anguish caused to the royal family is a source of great discomfort to me. I know first hand how much it affected them at that time, and how the program and the false narrative it created have haunted the family in in previous years. Especially because, even today, not much has been adequately explained about the development of the program. “
His deal is the latest in a series of interview-related payments, which have collectively cost the BBC millions of pounds in compensation and legal fees.
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Matt Wiessler, a graphic designer who was blacklisted in the industry after creating fake bank statements on Bashir’s orders, received hundreds of thousands of pounds. Diana’s former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, received a significant amount he has donated to a charity, while the BBC has also made a donation to a charity as an apology to the royal family. Negotiations with another person affected by the interview are believed to be ongoing.
Bashir used his interview with Diana to become a world star, then interviewed people like Michael Jackson and then worked in the US, where he was a regular on television news networks. Persistent questions about his journalistic ethics were ignored when he returned to the BBC as a religious affairs correspondent in 2016.
However, the 25th anniversary of the Panorama interview in 2020 sparked a re-evaluation of the program, with Diana’s brother Earl Spencer pushing a full investigation into how it was obtained. Journalists used requests for freedom of information to obtain internal BBC documents showing that the corporation was aware of allegations of Bashir’s misconduct shortly after the broadcast.
Bashir left the BBC in 2021, citing ill health, before the publication of an independent report by Lord Dyson.