jane martinson is professor ofjournalism at city college. welcome to you all. jane, you have been writing about this for the guardian. how do you assess the scale of the reaction to this story? the scale of the reaction, i mean, you know, this is a devastating report for the bbc. it involved the royal family, it involved, you know, wrongdoing and, sort of, terrible mishandling of a wrongdoing 25 years ago — including members of the bbc, including members of the bbc who then went on to hold senior jobs, and, of course, which i am sure we will come on to talk about, a reporter who subsequently left and then returned to the bbcjust five years ago. so the reaction was obviously going to be huge. the timing is terrible for the bbc, and i would argue terrible for all of us who care about ethicaljournalism and public service broadcasting. the government has made no secret of wanting to, you know, look into the bbc. there have been lots of comments from, including the prime minister to other cabinet ministers, there is a psb review going on. the bbc itself has got a midterm charter review, which should've just been about sort of relatively small issue of governance, and it looks like if you listen to the ministerial statements over the past few days, to be broadened out. we are going to get a new head of ofcom. for so many reasons this is huge. i would argue, you know, such a shame when we actually need the bbc — we are talking on a day when the prime minister's former right—hand man hasjust said how terribly the government handled the covid pandemic last year. we need the bbc to be leading the reporting on that. it's a huge story, and not dealing with the complaints —— with the mistakes of so many years ago. i hear you. we have a lot to get through. i just briefly want a bit of context for this, because richard sharp, chairman of the bbc, spoke to us on monday. we've got tim davie, the dg, he was on the today programme on tuesday. they have both announced further internal investigations. it's fair to say that the bbc is in crisis mode, but how does that crisis compare to bbc crises of the past? ooh, that... you could argue the bbc has had many crises, and i compared, when i wrote about this last week, i compared it... they are different, but the jimmy saville crisis, cliff richard, problems happen at the bbc when they believe in journalism where the end justifies the means. and that has no place in ethicaljournalism. of course, we want the bbc to break stories, to do great journalism, but not when means are unethical, as it was found to be with this particular case. so i think there are questions for the bbc, and i think tim davie�*s interview in particular where he talked about two points that actually were not dealt with by dyson, the 2016 hiring. why an earth was martin bashir brought back, given his history? and also the whistle—blowing factor. to me, the terrible point of this is the only person to truly suffer at the time was the freelance designer who was asked simply to mock—up a bank report. that is shocking to me. we will... the bbc should never allow that. we will unpick this in a bit, but i want to zoom out and really focus on the relationship between reporters and their editors. i want to look at the methods that reporters use as well to gain trust from a source, from a potential interviewee. martin bashir�*s editor was, of course, the late steve hewlett, who in his post—panorama career became founding presenter of the media show. now, john, you are an investigative journalist. you have been in the panorama office... i was going to say forever, not quite forever, but you have been there long time. we are familiar with your work on screen. can you give us a sense of before you get to that point, before the cameras are rolling, what is the work and the ground work that has to be done? what are some of the tools that you use? well, it depends what sort of story it is. i mean, if it's against criminals or is about criminals or, you know, dishonest people, then subterfuge is authorised, but only on a very strict basis. obviously, in this case, martin bashir... john, we are just getting your hand knocking the desk, sojust... i want to hear you. so sorry. martin bashir had used some really deceitful subterfuge and, obviously, the princess was not a criminal, she was a young and rather vulnerable woman. these days, if you want to do anything like that, it would be, i think, very closely monitored. i don't think it was in 1995. i think martin bashir didn't have a producer, to the extent that he didn't have any sort of supervision, and it was really steve hewlett, the editor, and obviously steve had a lot of other things to do as well. so a producer wasn't brought in to the process until right at the last moment — literally days before the interview itself, and that was reallyjust to handle the sort of technicalities of the actual production of the interview. they... that wouldn't happen today. things have shifted. david, if i can ask you, and again, this is in a historical context, when you were the editor of the sun in the �*90s, how much did you know about what your journalists were doing on a day—to—day basis and the tactics they were using? well, of course the answer to that is that i can't - possibly know that. i thought i knew quite a lot, and had a very good head i of news, who i put in place - because i had known him a long, long time and i trusted him. i think pretty much - i knew what was going on. as an editor of any kind, - you never know where a reporter has got a story and how they have gone - about that story. but what i would say is that i think there is a certain- naivete at the bbc in the case of martin bashir, which - wouldn't have happened, oddly and ironically, - in fleet street. i think fleet street - is much better, actually, at having suspicion- about its own reporters. i certainly was always asking questions of that kind. - but tell me this, if you had a particular reporter that was courting a source, was going out for meetings, would you generally have known about the ins and outs of those meetings? i think so, yes. i think, look, there is no - doubt that this era, the '905, was the wild west, right? it's completely different now. there is much more governance. the irony of this is _ that the governance changes, which the government say. they want the bbc to adopt, they have already adopted. this is already in place. and it's the same in newspapers. . i mean, you know, partly. because all kinds of things and leveson and the decline i of the power of those papers, the kind of things that went . on then would not go on now. i also think it's important, perhaps, not to defend i martin bashir, i don't know. martin bashir, but i do always have sympathy with somebody where the entire world turns . against them, and that is what has happened to martin bashirj in the last few days. it's important to remember that the culture then - was very different. i mean, you know, iwas at. the sun when i was in a very junior position, i hasten to add, when kelvin - was still editing, _ when we had squidgy gate, which was the tape - between princess diana and james gilbey, which isjust a few years before this. - there were all kinds of things going on at that time. - there was a... and also what is not, i you know, never really remembered is that, you know, when the duke of cambridge i made his statement, - which i thought was slightly unwise, in fact, quite unwise, but understandable, - what he perhaps doesn't understand is that his i mother was using a number ofjournalists, including - andrew morton, as we know, but others as well, _ and his father was very close to people at the sun, - or people close to his father were close to people, - and camilla, so stuart higgins, my predecessor at the sun, i had a lot of stories from that side of things, _ particularly from camilla and people around her. i of course, and... so, either side were playing - that game, and so when she did what she did, the princess agreed to be interviewed, | it should be seen in - the context of a huge battle that was going on between those two sides. _ of course, and i think that's really useful. what i don't want to do is go down the path of everyone was doing it, because we know what martin bashir was doing. absolutely, - i'm not excusing it. i'm trying to put it in context. - of course, of course, and that's really important. dorothy, as a former head of news and current affairs at channel 4, how much would you expect your editors to know about what journalists were doing and what does that extend to? does it extend to, you know, do they know about their phone calls? do they know about the e—mails they are sending? well, with a story of the profile of this one, i would expect the editor and the producer to be across all the details. this wasn'tjust any other story, this was an exceptional and extraordinary story. so i am assuming that steve hewlett — a very clever man — knew a lot about what martin bashir was doing. he's not in a position now to tell us how much he did know, but he would know, definitely, you would know a lot of detail. richard, can i bring you in here? because i know you are wearing two hats for us today. i want to start off with you wearing your former editor in chief at itn hat. in that role, did you ever involve yourself in discussions between journalists, and sources and interviewees? no, ididn't. and i think the itn system was based on delegating that responsibility to the editors of the different services, for the service for dorothy at channel 4, there is one for itv, there is one for 5. essentially, there is a lot of trust injournalism. what happened with martin bashir was a very successful and disgraceful deception of his editor and of his management. and i think it's quite interesting that this was a story, dorothy is right, this is a story that had the potential to go really badly wrong from the beginning. clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, i agree with the judgment about steve hewlett, he was a very good editor. he made the wrong call, which was he thought he could supervise it, the early stages of the project himself. by the end of the project, if you look at something like john bert's memoirs, half the bbc management is crawling all over it because, of course, their other issue was whether they could transmit it, given that the chairman was married to the queen's lady in waiting. of course, there is a lot of knots in this story. david, i want to know from your perspective, you have spoken about your relationship with journalists that were working for you at the sun. did you ever get to a point of turning down a story because there were question marks over how access had been gained? oh, yes. many times. well, more than five times in five years, yeah, - which is quite a few. without libeling anyone, can you kind of give us a... ..notion of context? i think an editor... well, i will answer that by saying this, i think. an editor sets a culture. and, you know, you have to be prepared to be unpopular, - and i was very unpopular| within my own newsroom because i was quite - conservative after having had my fingers burned in the first year. - now, i knew steve hewlett very well, i wasn't a friend, - but i really liked him and got on well with him. _ but i do think it's important to say that the politics - within panorama have always been toxic. - everybody knows that. in fact, there are two big toxic institutions here, . the royal family and panorama, and when the two clashed, - it all went wrong. i just... something went wrong - at panorama, which, you know, it doesn't surprise me. john, i just want to bring john in because you winced when david just said that the culture at panorama is "toxic". you winced, why did you wince? well, "toxic", it was competitive, it was quite gossipy. i mean, that's, you know, in some ways, that's quite a healthy thing. there were a few toxic elements to it, i suppose, but i don't think, it's a different place, i don't go there very much these days, but they are all sort of freelancers. everyone has been sacked. laughing. orlaid off. but to the extent that i do go, it seems to be rather sort of docile, actually, and i think all the venom, such as there was, has drained away. i don't mean now. so back, would you say it was toxic back then, john? well... it was lively, you know, i don't know about toxic. lively and toxic. i don't know, i mean, it was fun! it was fun, ok. so the reporter—editor relationship, i appreciate that context, but we know that there were mechanisms in play here further up the bbc that failed to stop what happened from happening. richard, if i can come to you with your other hat on now, you were a bbc governor appointed in 200a. give us a sense of what that role was about, and at what stage of the bbc�*s journalism would you have got involved ? well, what happened in 1995 was under the old governance system. when i came in, the governors were on their way out, largely because they'd made a hash of the hatton affair, which is another case of a story that went wrong. so we were appointed to run a new system of governance called the trust, and what happened there was that if there had been a complaint, it would be not judged only by the bbc's own internal staff, what was happening was the bbc were marking their own homework, essentially. the complaints were being held and investigated inside the bbc. the trustees were meant to be independent of the bbc. they were not executives. and we had an editorial standards committee and we employed outside investigators — they could be compliance experts, they could be media lawyers, they could be experienced former editors. and with serious complaints, they would investigate those complaints. they would talk to the bbc, they would talk to the complainant, and they would give a report to us, and then we would decide what we thought about it, and the rule of the game was if the editorial standards committee said it was wrong, that was the end of the discussion. bbc had to accept it. bbc staff didn't like that very much, i have to say. but the authority of the trust was that we could oblige the bbc to make an on—air apology, oblige them to change the way they were doing things, and it was a system that didn't work perfectly. the trust had lots of other problems, and it was then shutdown in 2016. richard, in fact, can i ask... in fact, that bit of the system didn't work badly. if i can ask you this specifically, your knowledge of the bbc governance and the kind of various incarnations it's been through, was there in your mind any point where the processes in place would've stopped the diana panorama actually going out? would the processes have stopped? yes, i think they would. i think that... in the case of the trust, there was an editorial standards system run at the top of the bbc, which was chaired by mark byford, which i think would have meant it... had a problem like this begun to emerge, it might have been taken away from the line management. but i'm not... i have to say, i'm not certain. i think the fundamental problem is that when things go this badly wrong, it's very hard for organisations to look after themselves. they need some sort of external intervention to see how things are really happening. i mean, i think, in a way, what's going on at present is a good example of how the news system is stronger. because what's going on now is, as i understand it, that the chairman has asked the new bbc board's editorial standards committee, which has a couple of very strong editorial figures on it — ian hargreaves and robbie gibb, they have asked them to look into things like how can the governance be improved? how can whistle—blowing be sorted out? those sorts of issues. it is the right thing to do. richard, if i can ask you for a brief response because i want to bring janet do you think that new body will risk meddling in actualjournalism? is that a concern for you? yeah, there's a huge problem here, which is almost all of our systems are about post—transmission. they're about once something has gone wrong, how do you investigate it and put it right? and there's a real problem with intervening too early because the danger is that a complaint can be an attempt to stop the programme going out. so i don't think there's an easy solution to this at all. there's not an easy solution. jane, you're nodding. tell me what's your take on this. yeah, i would agree with that. actually, just on the j previous thing about the reporter—editor, we should point out| steve hewlett, the dyson report cleared steve hewlett, _ said there wasn't evidence. and actually i think - to david's point as well, talking about the '905 - being the wild west, you know, you were saying that it'sl different on fleet street, david, but you and i know that phone hacking, for example, i when
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