Richard Madeley accused the BBC of 'lying' as he hosted Good Morning Britain alongside Susanna Reid on Tuesday.
The father-of-two did not hold back as he and Susanna discussed the BBC's recent statement about Martin Bashir being rehired, despite questions being raised about how he obtained his Panorama interview with Princess Diana in 1995.
Richard began: "Very interesting timing yesterday by the BBC, the new director general promised in an interview on the Today programme three weeks ago that the following week - that’s two weeks ago now - the BBC would issue a statement about why they rehired Martin Bashir - who has confessed to fraudulently making forgeries to convince Earl Spencer and his sister Diana to give that interview.
"We all know that story and nobody could understand why Bashir was rehired," Richard continued.
"And they issued this pusillanimous statement yesterday afternoon, very neatly timed, it was very late, very neatly timed just before the big announcement on what was going to happen on the 21st, there’s no mistaking the timing of that. A good day to bury a bad story."
"And what they said was, first of all they said why they didn't rehire him, and they said, 'we didn't rehire him to shut him up'.
"So the question that we put back to the BBC press office was: 'Yeah but why did you rehire him?' and the answer that came back was, 'well the executives that hired him thought he was the best man for the job and they didn’t know anything about the forgeries'.
"It was all over the Mail on Sunday, the Mail on Sunday broke the story years before. Are you honestly telling me that BBC News executives, who interviewed and hired Martin Bashir..." Richard fumed.
"I mean look us in the eye and tell us this: are you honestly telling us you didn’t know that Martin Bashir had forged those documents? Because if you are saying that, I think you’re lying, simple as that!"
Bashir's now infamous 1995 chat with the late Princess Diana has come under fire recently.
A huge investigation into it by Lord Dyson, the former master of the rolls and head of civil justice, found that Bashir used deceitful measures to secure the Panorama chat with Diana.
A report into the interview concluded that Bashir acted inappropriately and in serious breach of BBC guidelines.
It read: "I have also concluded that, without justification, the BBC covered up in its press logs such facts as it had been able to establish about how Mr Bashir secured the interview and failed to mention the issue at all on any news programme and thereby fell short of the high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark."
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.
