Our free and fearless press loves nothing more than an opportunity to lord it over the hated BBC. So when a report found that former
Panorama man Martin Bashir had used what were termed “
deceitful methods” in order to secure his interview with Diana, Princess of Wales - an interview that had many in the press seething with jealousy - the front page rantfest was all too predictable. And so it came to pass.
The Sun and Mail have been especially righteous, with the Murdoch masthead howling “
Wills’ Panorama Bombshell … BBC let down my Mum, my family … and Britain” and the Rothermere goons thundering “
On day of shame for BBC, prince’s devastating blast at Bashir’s ‘lurid and false claims’ that he says fuelled Diana’s ‘fear and paranoia’ and drove his parents apart … WILLIAM: BBC LIES RUINED MY MOTHER’S LIFE”.
Thus the singularly unedifying sight of the two largest and most poisonous fatbergs in the sewer of tabloid journalism attempting to slither their way to the moral high ground. Worse are the attempts by both titles to up the ante so far as to start a “
BBC killed Diana” narrative. You think I jest? Consider today’s
Sun editorial,
which posits exactly that.
“
BBC’s scandalous Princess Diana interview wrecked and arguably ended lives … It is possible that it set off a chain of events which led to her death two years later in Paris … That without that interview … she might be alive today … it triggered her swift divorce, and with it the removal of … the royal protection officers who might have kept her safe”.
This is carefully crafted horseshit: Diana had a protection officer with her when she took her fateful last journey. Also, she was offered continuation of the same protection the rest of the Royals get. That has not stopped the deeply unpleasant Dan Wootton, now sounding off at
Mail Online,
peddling the same crackpot ideas.
“
Did the BBC kill Princess Diana? Not directly, no … this is the BBC's Watergate moment. A day of shame for the corporation and its supposedly moral news service”. Anyone who has studied the way the tabloid press went after ITV’s
Death On The Rock will be able to see the similarities - crudely discrediting broadcast media. And the
Mail had more.
The impossibly over-inflated ego of former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil
was wheeled out to pontificate “
[Charles Spencer] drew a straight line between the lies and deception Martin Bashir told Princess Diana … and her tragic death in a Paris road tunnel car crash two years later. And he’s right”. So let me put Wootton, Brillo and the rest straight.
It wasn’t the BBC commissioning paparazzi, knowing the modus operandi of those around Paris. It wasn’t the BBC that embarked on a campaign of personal denigration against Diana, typified by Richard Littlejohn, then at the
Sun and now at the
Mail, leering “
Di is so dim she thinks opera is a chat-show host”. That only ended with her death.
It wasn’t the BBC that commissioned illegal activity from Steve Whittamore and his network. It wasn’t the BBC that employed “
Fake Sheikh” Mazher Mahmood. It wasn’t the BBC that libelled the lead witness to
Death On The Rock, the McCanns and Christopher Jefferies. It wasn’t the BBC who piled in on Caroline Flack. And don’t forget Hillsborough.
What we are now seeing is the sickest form of projection.
No surprise there, then.
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Incredible.
ReplyDeleteWe keep thinking the Murdoch/Rothermere guttersnipes have reached the bottom of their sewer.
Then they plunge even further in their own filth.
Utterly disgusting, cold, inhuman dregs.
The mark of a psychopath is a complete disregard for the truth and feelings of others.
ReplyDeleteMurdoch and Rothermere and their "journalist" employees entered that territory decades ago. Now they're lost in a swamp of their own making.
"… this is the BBC's Watergate moment."
ReplyDeleteNo Sir: This is the Conservative party's Reichstag Fire moment.
A BBC journo told a porky 25 years ago. The current rabble of dunderheads masquerading as a government pours out blatant whoppers. Almost. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. Where’s the outrage from the Daily Fail and The Sc*m over that?
ReplyDeletei diskard them.
I’m with Christopher Hitchens when it comes to Diane anyway.
ReplyDeleteBashir might have to answer to the law for using forged documents.
ReplyDeleteBut none of it changes the facts revealed in the interview. Which demonstrated an unelected head of state ran a dysfunctional, cruel family driving Diana Spencer to despair. All the lying hypocritical noise in the world can't hide what is now in the public record. Nor does it dispel serious doubts about the manner of her death.
As for print and broadcast media, their utter moral corruption has been exposed time and time again in film art such as Citizen Kane, Network and Broadcast News. There isn't a single corporate media news organisation worth anything more than a bucket of warm spit. Nor can the perpetrators plead they were only following orders - that "defence" is no more valid now than it was at the Nuremberg Tribunals.
As said earlier, owners and "journalists" both are sociopaths and psychopaths. Martin Bashir is the least of it.
At least it's got rid of Lord Hall, who as Director General of the BBC privatised everything he could get his hands on, from the weather forecast to Songs of Praise. Good riddance.
ReplyDelete