BBC donates £1.4m sales from Princess Diana’s Panorama interview to her charities

Interviewer Martin Bashir was found to have used ‘deceitful behaviour’ in an official inquiry last year

The BBC has donated over £1.4 million made from the sales of the Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, to charity.

The £1.42m sum will be shared equally between seven charities linked with the late royal.

In August 2021, the broadcaster announced that it would make amends for Martin Bashir’s 1995 interview with Diana.

At the time, BBC said that it intended to pay about £1.5m to a charity chosen by the royal family. The figure would include the £1.15m sum the network made from the global rights to the interview.

In May last year, BBC apologised to the royal family and returned its Bafta award after an official inquiry concluded that Bashir used “deceitful behaviour” and was in “serious breach” of the corporation’s guidelines when he secured his Panorama interview with the princess.

Bashir broke BBC rules by mocking up fake bank statements and showing them to Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, to gain access to the princess for his explosive sit-down chat in 1995, the report said.

The investigation, led by former judge Lord Dyson, said that the corporation “fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency, which are its hallmark”.

Returning its Bafta, the BBC said in a statement: “The 1995 Panorama interview received a number of awards at the time.

“We do not believe it is acceptable to retain these awards because of how the interview was obtained.”

The BBC’s director-general Tim Davie said that the broadcaster accepts “in full” the findings of Lord Dyson’s report.