Bashir tricked Michael just like he did Princess Di, says Jackson's nephew

A few months ago, British journalist Martin Bashir came under fire when it was revealed that he'd been deceptive when he secured his famous interview with Princess Diana in 1995 - and had lied to BBC managers. The interview had been a huge scoop for the BBC - no member of the royal family had ever spoken in such candid terms about their private life.

An independent inquiry by Lord Dyson, a former senior judge, issued a report saying that Bashir had "lied and maintained the lie until he realised that it was no longer sustainable. This was most reprehensible behaviour which casts considerable doubt on his credibility generally."

Bashir is alleged to have manipulated the circumstances to lead Diana into confessions she might not otherwise have made. It was the fact that she trusted Bashir that convinced Michael Jackson to agree to be interviewed by him.

"One of the most disturbing things is the fact that a lot of disadvantaged children go to Neverland. It's a dangerous place for a vulnerable child to be," says Bashir in a voiceover in the 2003 documentary Living With Michael Jackson. Jackson's nephew Taj Jackson says he was shocked when he heard these words.

Now Taj is speaking out, hoping to clear his uncle's name after allegations of impropriety with children were again levelled against him in another documentary, 2019's Leaving Neverland.

"When I first heard that my uncle was doing the documentary [with Bashir], I was super excited because the world would see who Michael Jackson truly was; the wonderful stuff he did, the charities he was involved in. He'd bus in 300 kids from inner cities or from the Make a Wish Foundation to Neverland, and that's the footage Bashir used, but with negative framing after he'd said to Michael at the time 'how wonderful it was' and that it was 'nothing short of a spiritual thing'."

According to Taj, those comments were replaced with negative shaping. Luckily, says Taj, his uncle had a camera running, which captured the disparities between the interview Bashir was conducting and the framing he used. You can watch this footage on YouTube in a response documentary titled The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See.

"When I watched it [Bashir's interview], I was angry. My uncle didn't trust journalists, but this one guy got given an opportunity. It frustrated me because I knew it would cause Michael to shut down [if he was negatively portrayed]. That's unfair for the world. Michael filed a complaint to the two UK broadcasting standards [authorities], but they were ignored."

For Taj, who claims to have been sexually abused himself, the allegations against his uncle resonated.

"When Leaving Neverland was announced, I begged people involved in the #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns to talk to me, because I knew some of the players involved. I didn't want them to make the mistake of backing someone who falsely accuses people. But nobody was interested - they didn't care, they had their narrative. False accusers do exist, especially when there's money involved.

"In America we couldn't even question the allegations against my uncle. If you did, you were sympathising. I knew Wade [Robson, an Australian dancer who accused Michael Jackson of sexual abuse that he claims had occurred when he visited Michael Jackson as a child]. But no-one wanted to listen to me or talk to me. Journalists had already made up their minds, they weren't going to give me the same opportunity they gave Wade and James [Safechuck, who also claims that Michael Jackson sexually molested him as a child]."

Michael Jackson's brother, Tito, was recording his album, 3T, when news of the King of Pop's death broke on the gossip channel, TMZ.

"We didn't know if the news was true. The channel often ran stories about the ill health of our family, or Michael, that weren't true. They didn't retract these stories when they were proven to be false. So we didn't trust them. We confirmed that Michael was on his way to the hospital but that he wasn't declared dead. We were glued to the TV. We didn't want to go to the hospital because it would be a circus; we were in shock. When it was confirmed that Michael had died, it destroyed us. When you grieve Michael Jackson's death, you're not grieving alone, the whole world is grieving. In some ways that's comforting, but in other ways ... there was no privacy."

His voice quivers. "We took the kids to Hawaii to distract them. The paparazzi followed us snapping pictures of the kids. When security approached saying, 'They're grieving, can't you give them some space?' the pap replied, 'One shot is worth $200,000.' It's human decency versus money - when there's that high a price, human decency goes out the window. We'd wanted to reconnect as a family in Hawaii, but instead we were dodging paparazzi."

In 2005, when Michael Jackson was on trial for molesting Gavin Arvizo, a cancer patient in remission who was 13 years old at the time of the alleged abuse (Jackson was acquitted), Taj moved to Neverland and stayed with his uncle for the duration of the trial.

"I tried to make him forget everything that had happened in court that morning and just have fun. We watched The Three Stooges and laughed with his kids. It was like Groundhog Day. We'd repeat the same routine every day. That's how I'd try and help him get through. [His song] Will You Be There is about holding someone and making sure they don't fall in their darkest times. I was there."

Taj tries to explain, "I'm not a 'yes' person, that's what he appreciated about me and my brothers. We loved him unconditionally but we didn't tell him what he wanted to hear. He liked that."

He says he wants people to treat his uncle as "a human and not as a monster. All the drama was cause and effect. There were certain things that led to other things. Michael didn't start losing weight and his appetite for no reason - there were things that happened to him that drove him to that point.

"If I can show that, it would humanise him. It's important that people realise Michael was a human being with a family - us. The media would take potshots thinking that he was some kind of cartoon character."

Taj explains that he was driven to defend his uncle when his own daughter was born. "I didn't want her to live in a world in which Michael Jackson is seen as a monster. Not on my watch, not when I knew that man for 30 years."

Taj believes that he'll get justice for his uncle with his seven-part docuseries showing the Michael Jackson the world hasn't seen. He plans to take on Bashir's allegations and those of Leaving Neverland. "We've always known what Bashir was all about, I'm happy the world is starting to catch up."

To Taj, what's happening to Bashir is bittersweet. "He earned millions - our misery ended up being someone else's pleasure," he says. "Bashir is like the dirty cop of journalism that goes around planting evidence and changing stories that land people in jail. He wasn't the one that killed my uncle, but he put him in an emotional jail that eventually did kill him."

• Taj Jackson has a GoFundMe page for contributions to the making of his documentary, which is tentatively titled 'The Truth Runs Marathons'.