BBC faces fresh scandal over mocked up letter for its Terry Venables expose.
New Panorama fakery storm: BBC faces fresh scandal over mocked up letter for its Terry Venables expose… two years before Martin Bashir’s Princess Diana interview
- Terry Venables condemned the ‘dubious tactics’ he said were used on him
- Venables hopes to clear his name over two Panorama episodes in 1993 and 1994
- At the time, he complained that documents shown on screen were ‘cooked up’
The BBC last night faced a fresh Martin Bashir fakery storm over a Panorama he presented about football legend Terry Venables.
The former England manager condemned the ‘same dubious tactics’ he said were used on him and to secure Bashir’s interview with Princess Diana.
Venables hopes to clear his name over two Panorama episodes about his financial dealings presented by Bashir in 1993 and 1994.
At the time, he complained that documents shown on screen were ‘cooked up’.
The BBC faced a fresh Martin Bashir (pictured left) fakery storm over a Panorama he presented about football legend Terry Venables (right with wife Yvette)
The BBC is under pressure to order a wider inquiry into what Venables calls ‘a culture of journalistic duplicity’.
It comes amid a slew of ramifications following Lord Dyson’s bombshell report last week into Bashir’s ‘devious’ and ‘deceitful’ tricks to land his interview with Diana in 1995.
After princes William and Harry tore into the BBC for hushing up the deceit of their rogue reporter, former director-general Lord Hall finally fell on his sword, quitting his post as chairman of the National Gallery on Saturday. Yesterday, on a further day of drama:
- Home Secretary Priti Patel declared the BBC’s reputation ‘compromised’ and warned it faces ‘very significant’ reform;
- Bashir broke cover to say sorry but also proclaimed he ‘loved’ the princess and said it was ‘unreasonable’ to blame him for her death;
- He released extraordinary details of their close bond – including Diana turning up at hospital to hold his newborn third child;
- Prince William dodged a question about Bashir’s jaw-dropping apology during a visit to Scotland;
- A Commons debate today is set to see MPs call for an end to the licence fee;
- Channel 4’s former head of news Dorothy Byrne urged the BBC and ITV – where Bashir also worked – to ‘look at all his scoops’ amid claims of widespread lies;
- Nazir Afzal, the former chief prosecutor for the North West of England, called for a criminal investigation.
The Mail revealed on Saturday that Diana’s brother Earl Spencer has demanded Scotland Yard launch a probe into alleged blackmail and fraud at the BBC. The Metropolitan Police said it was ‘assessing’ it.
Instead of Lord Dyson’s excoriating report drawing a line under the Bashir scandal, there were signs yesterday of it spinning even further out of the corporation’s control.
Last night Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden was urged to investigate the ‘Venables affair’ by Tory peer Robert Hayward.
Lord Hayward demanded answers about the ‘striking similarities’ between the Diana and Venables Panoramas.
The Panorama programmes into Venables concerned claims the England manager had raised a £1million share of funds that rescued Tottenham Hotspur FC while he was the club’s chief executive through a ‘sale and leaseback’ deal.
A document reproduced on screen showed a schedule of assets used as collateral, which the programme claimed he did not own.
BBC sources have always insisted that although the Venables ‘mocked up graphic’ was not an original document, the information it showed was based on true information – unlike the one Bashir used to lure Diana, which was completely fabricated.
Lord Dyson’s report into the tricks Martin Bashir used to get his 1995 Diana interview includes a number of original documents. Among them is a confidential report – which Tony Hall, then BBC head of news and current affairs, prepared – into the bank statements faked for the Diana programme. In the same report to director general John Birt in 1996, Hall – now a peer – concluded the way a graphic for the earlier Terry Venables documentary was used had been ‘wrong’ and said the producer had been ‘severely reprimanded’. He rejected other claims over the Venables programme, including an allegation that ‘stolen documents’ had been paid for. The BBC kept the Hall memo secret and only released it last year after a 13-year freedom of information battle. It was the first evidence Lord Birt and Lord Hall knew that wrongdoing by Panorama and Bashir pre-dated the Diana programme. Lord Dyson published a draft of the memo, but redacted the Venables section (above left) – leaving black ink covering the BBC’s admission it had been ‘wrong’ (above).
Yesterday a source told the Mail the information for the Venables graphic was taken from an original document, and that – unlike with the Diana fiasco – the documentary team had sought official permission from the BBC to reconstruct it in the graphic.
The source said: ‘This document was 100 per cent accurate – and everything was declared to the BBC in advance. There was no duplicity involved.’
However Venables disputes this, saying the document was based on false information.
It has also emerged that a former BBC executive, Anne Sloman, admitted in the 1990s: ‘Faking documents had been going on as a general practice.’
And veteran Panorama reporter Tom Mangold warned he was ‘certain there are uglier revelations to come about my lying BBC colleague and the BBC’s cover up’.
After Bashir’s two Panorama exposes of Venables, who managed England from 1994 to 1996, the football manager launched legal action against the BBC.
He later withdrew his case in the face of strenuous BBC denials, with each side agreeing to pay their own legal fees. But now the corporation faces the prospect of the ‘Venables affair’ being reopened.
When, in 1996, BBC bosses discovered Bashir’s use of forged bank statements in the Diana case, they also examined claims documents were ‘mocked up’ in the Venables investigation.
A confidential report to the BBC board of governors from ex-director-general Tony Hall concluded the way a Venables graphic was used had been ‘wrong’, and said the documentary’s producer had been ‘severely reprimanded’.
However, Lord Hall rejected other claims, including an allegation that ‘stolen documents’ had been paid for and that the graphic was made with ‘false information’.
The BBC kept the Hall memo secret for 25 years and only released it last year after a 13-year freedom of information battle. It was the first evidence that ex-BBC director general Lord Birt, as well as Lord Hall, knew that wrongdoing by Panorama and Bashir pre-dated the Diana programme.The memo was referred to in Lord Dyson’s damning report published last Thursday.
However, while Lord Dyson published a draft of the memo, he redacted the Venables section in its entirety – leaving a large block of black ink covering the BBC’s admission it had been ‘wrong’ to show the Venables graphic in the way it was.
Last night Venables, 78, said: ‘Finally to receive the proof that the BBC and Panorama deployed the same dubious tactics against me is, of course, of some comfort.
‘What is really shocking is that there appeared to have been a culture of journalistic duplicity in the heart of our national broadcaster and I was, perhaps, but one of many victims of such doubtful practices.
‘The BBC has an absolute duty to make a clean breast of everything otherwise how else can we believe their word ever again?’
Meanwhile, Lord Hayward, a friend of Venables’ solicitor Nick Trainer, wrote to the Culture Secretary to ask for an inquiry.
He said: ‘Why did the BBC draw the terms of reference so narrowly that Lord Dyson could not investigate this case? Given the similarities between the two cases, eg. fake document being used, why has the BBC been determined to separate the two programmes?’ In his report, Lord Dyson said the Venables affair fell outside his remit.
But he did say the Panorama programme’s producer, Mark Killick, ‘strongly disputes’ the suggestion that his commissioning of the Venables graphic could be compared to Bashir’s commissioning of the fake bank statements, which he used to effect an introduction to Diana via her brother.
Last night a BBC spokesman said: ‘When people raise concerns of this kind about our programmes, of course we look into them.
‘The BBC has changed radically over the past 25 years and has significantly better processes and procedures in place to protect contributors, but we also know that it is important to keep learning.’
They added: ‘The BBC’s editorial guidelines have been updated and strengthened since 1996 and are clear about the BBC’s responsibility to ensure that any materials used do not distort the meaning of events or mislead audiences.’