Benjamin Hall: Many people felt this interview led to Princess Diana's death
Fox News reporter says the princess did the interview after being shown forged bank documents
"The Five" reacted Thursday to findings that BBC reporter Martin Bashir duped Princess Diana into a tell-all, questioning what persuaded the princess to give the interview.
Both Prince William and Harry responded to the report, with Prince William saying, "It is my view that the deceitful way the interview was obtained substantially influenced what my mother said. The interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse and has since hurt countless others. It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her."
Fox News' Benjamin Hall reports on "The Five" that Princess Diana gave the BBC interview after being shown "forged bank documents."
"You will remember this interview from 1995. It was ground-breaking, the first time Princess Diana had spoken publically about the breakdown of her marriage to Prince Charles about his adultery with Camilla Parker Bowles … Many people feel that this interview led to events that led to her death years later," Hall said.
Co-host of "The Five" Dana Perino noted that it was surprising that Princess Diana's public relations team asked for the bank records and agreed to the interview in the first place.
"Her team was quite diminished at the time," Hall said. "The Royal family by all accounts had cut her off. She was left with quite a small team, her brother being the main one. This journalist Martin Bashir approached the brother saying, 'I've come across these documents which show that members of your household and of Princess Diana's household have been accepting money, totaling about 10,000 pounds… To give information on her life to both the tabloids as well as security and it was that piece of information that encourages Diana to go with Martin Bashir."
Fox Business' Kennedy noted that Princess Diana was the "brightest burning Royal" and asked how Bashir's interview changed how she was pursued by the press.
"She was the shining star of the royal family at the time, and frankly many people at the time said Prince Charles didn't like that," Hall said. "Princess Diana was the people's princess, the one that people turned to so when the divorce or when the marriage broke down, people started to side with her and they didn't like that. As soon as she spoke to the press, she kind of cross that line… When she came out and get that big interview it was almost as if the gloves came off and she was fair game for the rest of the press and it was really at that point we started to see them hound her."
CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich asks Benjamin Hall "who was behind the investigation?"
"It came about just because of changes in the media that we are seeing. We had the phone-hacking scandal which took place ten years ago, we have seen a number of them brought back and reinvestigated, this has been one of them. As a result, this has come to light and been accepted by the BBC who always denied it. Whether there will be ramifications we just don't know at the moment but the press are being held to account more and more over here."
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox