Investigative journalist Andy Webb on his struggle to obtain BBC emails relating to Martin Bashir's Diana interview

Roger Bolton's Beeb Watch

The circumstances surrounding the securing of the Panorama interview with the late Princess of Wales have been one of the biggest controversies to beset the BBC. On this week’s programme we’re taking stock on the imminent release of emails by the BBC which concerns its handling of the Martin Bashir scandal. There has been quite a battle in the courts as the Corporation attempts to withhold and redact some of the emails requested under the Freedom of Information act by that very determined journalist and film maker Andy Webb. We talk to him about his fight, what he thinks he might learn from the emails and despite an apology from the director general Tim Davie to Lord Spencer why he thinks this matter is still worth pursuing.

“I'm interested in what I alleged to be a cover up which was instituted in 2020. But more to the point, it is, if indeed, this cover up exists, it's a cover up that is being fostered very, very expensively at the public expense, in as much as the licence fee is public money, it is happening now. This is huge sums of money which are being spent now, in order to prevent, in my view, the disclosure of these particular emails.”

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