BBC To Pay $2M Over ‘Deceitful’ Interview with Diana

The BBC will pay $2 million to a charity in a bid to make amends for the “deceitful” interview Martin Bashir conducted with the late Princess Diana in 1995. Her sons, Princes William and Harry, will reportedly help decide which charities earn the sum.

Rosa Monckton, a close friend of Princess Diana, told the Mail on Sunday: “This is an admirable decision, though obviously it cannot undo the damage that has been done or erase the BBC's guilt.”

The interview essentially blew up her marriage to Prince Charles when she said there were “three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” The pair divorced a year later, and then she died in a car crash in 1997.

The British High Court determined earlier this year that Bashir used fake documents and “deceitful methods” to land the blockbuster interview. William has previously criticized the “deceitful way the interview was obtained” and defended his mother.

“I would like to thank Lord Dyson and his team for the report,” the Duke of Cambridge said. “It is welcome that the BBC accepts Lord Dyson's findings in full — which are extremely concerning — that BBC employees: lied and used fake documents to obtain the interview with my mother; made lurid and false claims about the Royal Family which played on her fears and fueled paranoia; displayed woeful incompetence when investigating complaints and concerns about the program; and were evasive in their reporting to the media and covered up what they knew from their internal investigation.”