POLL: 98% SAY BBC BREXIT COVERAGE FAVOURED EU: Steven Brown (Express 20/10) said that a poll conducted by his newspaper into attitudes about the BBC’s coverage of Brexit had found that 98% (of 19,285 responses) believed that the Corporation ‘did side with the EU’ in its Brexit reporting. He explained that the conducting of the poll had been prompted by a tweet from former Labour MP Baroness Hoey which said that when the history of the Brexit period was written, the corporation would be shown to have ‘totally sided with the fear-mongering EU’.
‘ASTONISHING’ BBC ADMISSION ABOUT PRINCESS DI SCOOP: Victoria Ward (£ Telegraph 20/10), discussing the ‘bombshell’ interview Princess Diana gave to Martin Bashir of the BBC 25 years ago, reported that the BBC press office had said that a ‘physical copy’ of a handwritten note from the princess exonerating Mr Bashir of claims that he had pressured her by using false documents to agree to the interview no longer existed. Ms Ward added that, despite this, the corporation insisted that the existence of the note was documented in BBC internal records and had been seen at the time by BBC management. She said that Andrew Morton, who had written biographies of Princess Diana, had described – in a Channel 4 documentary about the interview due to be broadcast on October 21 – the BBC’s admission about the note as ‘astonishing’.
Kate Jackson (Sun 12/10) said that in the Channel 4 documentary about the Princess Diana interview, Patrick Jephson, the princess’s former private secretary, would claim that the BBC had exploited Princess Diana, and that ‘making her perform (in that way) had been ‘a combination of seduction and betrayal’. Ms Jackson also reported that Andrew Morton would claim that the princess – living in a world of anxiety about being ‘bumped off’ and possible surveillance – had been ‘very cleverly’ played upon by Martin Bashir.