Priti Patel: BBC ‘highly damaged’ by Princess Diana interview deception
Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has waded into the intensifying scandal surrounding the BBC’s infamous interview with the late Princess Diana, by claiming the state broadcaster had been “highly damaged” by the affair.
Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show (May 23), said Lord Dyson’s damning inquiry into how disgraced journalist Martin basher had used deception and forgery to secure the interview with Princess Diana constituted a “really significant moment” for the state broadcaster.
According to the Home Secretary, Lord Dyson’s report will “go down as one of those key moments in the history of the BBC”.
When asked by Marr if the BBC could survive this multi-layered scandal, Patel was non-committal, saying only that the corporation would have to “reflect and learn lessons”.
But the Home Secretary fired a warning shot across the bows of the leadership of the BBC by threatening that next year’s mid-term review of the corporation would be “a very significant and serious moment, at a time when the reputation of the BBC has been compromised”.
The mid-term review is set to examine how the BBC is funded and run, specifically looking at the fairness (or otherwise) of the license fee.
More broadly, Patel questioned the BBC’s utility in a “multimedia world” marked by relentless competition.
“This is the Netflix generation”, Patel said, before asking rhetorically: “How relevant is the BBC?”
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