Steve Hewlett's reputation could be the latest casualty of the Martin Bashir Diana scandal

It’s always difficult when a much-loved figure is revealed to have potentially had feet of clay. And while a great deal of mystery continues to swirl around the story of how exactly Martin Bashir procured his dynamite 1995 interview with Princess Diana, the latest version of events does not cast the late journalist Steve Hewlett in a positive light. 

The controversy over whether or not forged documents were used to hoodwink Diana into sitting down with Panorama has rumbled on and on. However, in an extraordinary development former BBC journalist Tom Mangold has stated that Hewlett, then Panorama editor, was at the centre of a conspiracy to cover up the deceit allegedly used by Bashir to get Diana in front of the cameras. 

“I do not pretend to have proof — after all, cover-ups are designed not to leave fingerprints — but all the evidence points to Hewlett as being behind the BBC cover-up to protect himself, Bashir, and the whole corporation,” he wrote in the Times. 

“I believe he personally organised a BBC operation to put the blame for the scandal on imaginary 'jealous colleagues, troublemakers and leakers' on the Panorama staff,” he said. “And who was the (unnamed) jealous colleague? Me.”

The allegations are that Bashir sourced fake bank payment documents which appeared to bear out the suspicions of Diana’s younger brother, Charles Spencer, that a former member of staff was spying on him (and receiving payment for their troubles). And that this favour in turn made Diana more amenable to granting Panorama the exclusive interview in which made her bombshell “three of us in the marriage” claim about Prince Charles. 

All that has been widely reported. What’s devastating about Mangold’s assertions is that they place the highly respected Hewlett bang in the middle of the cover-up. Hewlett, according to Mangold, assisted in drawing a veil around Bashir’s activities – in particular having a graphic designer draw up the fake bank slips (he was later blacklisted by the BBC despite having no idea the documents would be passed off as genuine). Questioned about Bashir’s actions Hewlett is said to have replied, “I don't see why this is any of your f_______ business” and to have dismissed unease within Panorama over the methods employed by Bashir as envy from other reporters. 

Hewlett became a national treasure and gained huge public sympathy following his cancer diagnosis and his death at the age of 58 in 2017. At that point he was one of the country’s most highly-regarded journalists. In the Eighties and Nineties he received acclaim for his unflinching documentaries, including a 1991 BBC film about the Maze Prison. He helped, too, to expose the control MI5 historically exerted over the hiring and firing of staff at the BBC. 

And he secured some knockout scoops – including an interview with the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Perhaps in Bashir he saw a younger version of himself – a newshound determined to do whatever was required to land that exclusive.

Later, as host of Radio 4’s Media Show, he was both unflappable and deeply personable. With glasses perched at the end of his nose, he had the air of a favourite uncle who just happened to be immensely good at their job. 

And he had that rare gift for communicating complex facts in a straightforward manner – yet without speaking down to the listener. Not for nothing was his catchphrase “to cut a long story short”. That professionalism endured even as he reported on his own battle with cancer. 

In February 2017, around the time he married his partner, Rachel Crellin, and just a few weeks before his death, he gave a moving interview to Eddie Mair on Radio 4’s PM show in which he applied his usual journalistic rigour to the news that his cancer of the oesophagus was terminal. Across the country, hearts broke. 

“My consultant came back and she told me that we’d got as far as we can get. I asked what that meant,” he said to Mair. “She said, ‘It means we’re no longer trying to save your life from cancer, because we can’t.'”

“Most of us will end up in my position at some point, although it is not quite the same when an older person dies,” he told the Guardian around the same time. “Then there is something almost orderly, or even natural, about gradually sloughing off this mortal coil. This is different.”

“The size of the response has been amazing,” he added. “Hundreds of people are in touch. My social media followers went up by a thousand, for a start. People say I am brave about cancer, but I am just realistic. I have my moments, of course, when I well up.”

Hewlett also campaigned tirelessly for higher standards in the media. He is credited with bringing an end to the tenure of Peta Buscombe, of the now discredited Press Complaints Commission, when he grilled her over the commission’s bungled handling of the phone-hacking scandal (for which he won the Nick Clarke award for journalism). 

“Steve was a prolific commentator and writer on all things media,” Media Show producer Katy Takatsuki wrote in a tribute published the month he died.

"When I first started working with him on The Media Show, I noticed immediately that he’d often ask if I’d seen, heard or read his work. At first, I mistook this as some sort of needy reassurance. But as I got to know Steve, and realised just how small his ego was, the true purpose dawned. It was all about standards for him. He was testing me to see if I was fully up to date on the story - and he was also seeking feedback. Had he explained the – often dense and complicated – story in a way the audience would understand?"

Hewlett, of course, never pretended to be perfect. And, given the choice, he would probably have preferred not to be put on a pedestal as a paragon of ethical journalism.   

And yet it is obviously difficult to reconcile the image we have of Hewlett as both slightly cuddly and a one-man Woodward and Bernstein with Mangold’s damning portrait. 

“Britain’s most treasured news institution conspired, lied, deceived and cheated its way out of a scandal that threatened its very reputation, with the possibility of police action at the end of it,” Mangold writes. “And who was the chief perpetrator, who stood behind this calamitous mess? I believe it could only have been Hewlett.”

There is surely more fall-out to come from the Panorama scandal. But already its impact has been hugely disorientating. Bashir’s Diana interview has been applauded over the decades as one of the scoops of the century.

That no longer appears to be the case and, if anything, it may be just one further example of Diana being duped by powerful men seeking to benefit through their association with her. And now the scandal has taken the gloss off Steve Hewlett’s saintly image. What further reputational havoc will be wreaked, before the truth – all of it – comes out?