BBC Fakes LSE Credentials to Access N. Korea

[Teddy Bear]

Three BBC journalists have been found to have used the London School of Economics for a cover story to enter North Korea to film a Panorama documentary.

Since this has jeopardised other LSE students currently on a trip there, as well as any of those in the future, and it's doubtful these journalists would have gained access to anything that the N. Koreans wouldn't want them to see or know, is it really worth it?

I wonder how the BBC will justify it. I imagine they will present themselves as 'fearless finders of the truth'.

BBC fakes London student credentials to access North Korea
Three BBC journalists have been found to have used the London School of Economics for a cover story to enter North Korea to film a Panorama documentary

by The Commentator

The Commentator has learned that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the British publicly owned news organisation, has forged student credentials for its journalists in order that they could gain access to the secretive North Korea.

An e-mail from the director of the London School of Economics (LSE) on Saturday stated that the BBC used the visit to plant three journalists inside North Korea at a risk to the university and its students on the trip.

The letter states that a trip organised by the LSE's 'Grimshaw Club' was used as cover by BBC journalists without the knowledge or consent of the London university. "The School authorities had no advance knowledge of the trip or of its planning," it said.

It is stated that a Mr. John Sweeney gained entry to North Korea by posing as a PhD student. The North Korean authorities allege that he described his occupation for entry control purposes as "LSE student, PhD in History" and gave his address as that of LSE - including a specific office room number which is actually used by a genuine member of LSE staff.

Students report that the North Korean guides during the visit repeatedly addressed him as "Professor" and that Sweeney actively went along with that. John Sweeney graduated from LSE in 1980 with a BSc in Government. The university maintains that he is not an LSE student and that he does not work for the LSE.

Sweeney however maintains that the LSE students “knew and understood what was at stake for them before [the] trip.”

The visit was planned and cleared at the "highest level" of the BBC, it is claimed, and a documentary with footage from the visit is expected to air on Monday 15th April. The Panorama documentary entitled, "North Korea Undercover" is listed on the BBC website as airing at the said time, with John Sweeney reporting from inside "one of the most rigidly controlled nations on earth".

It has been revealed that Sweeney, along with colleagues, posed as staff and students at the LSE in order to gain access alongside the Grimshaw Club. LSE management maintains that it had no prior knowledge of the BBC involvement and that the "BBC staff have admitted that the group was deliberately misled". The line used, according to the letter, was that "a journalist" would join the visit.

The LSE has denounced the BBCs use of the institution as a "lack of frankness" which "endangered the students and could endanger academics in the future".

The university has called on the BBC to withdraw the planned documentary and apologise for the incident, however the Director-General of the BBC is said to have refused these requests.

The visiting party included Mr John Sweeney, Mr Alexander Niakaris and Ms Tomiko Sweeney.

The e-mail reads:

The School wishes to alert all staff and students to a serious development which may affect them personally in future. This relates to the conduct of the BBC in respect of a Panorama programme entitled North Korea Undercover, which is due to be shown next Monday evening, 15 April.

The programme has been produced using as cover a visit to North Korea which took place from 23-30 March 2013 in the name of the Grimshaw Club, a student society at LSE. The School authorities had no advance knowledge of the trip or of its planning.

The visiting party included Mr John Sweeney, Mr Alexander Niakaris and Ms Tomiko Sweeney. In advance of the trip it was not known to the rest of the party that they were three journalists working for or with the BBC. Their purpose, posing as tourists, was to film and record covertly during the visit in order to produce the Panorama programme.

LSE's chief concerns are twofold. First, at no point prior to the trip was it made clear to the students that a BBC team of three had planned to use the trip as cover for a major documentary to be shown on Panorama. BBC staff have admitted that the group was deliberately misled as to the involvement of the BBC in the visit. The line used was that "a journalist" would join the visit. BBC staff have argued that this lack of frankness in denying the genuine members of the group the full details was done for their own benefit in the event of discovery and interrogation by North Korean authorities. It is LSE's view that the students were not given enough information to enable informed consent, yet were given enough to put them in serious danger if the subterfuge had been uncovered prior to their departure from North Korea.

BBC staff asserted in a meeting with LSE management on 9 April 2013 that the BBC had undertaken its own risk assessment in advance of the trip, which had been approved at the highest level. LSE believes that a reasonable assessor of risk, or indeed any parent contemplating their child's involvement in such an exercise, could only have concluded that the risks taken were unacceptable.

Our second major concern relates to information that came to light after the meeting on 9 April. This is that John Sweeney gained entry to North Korea by posing as a PhD student. The North Korean authorities allege that he described his occupation for entry control purposes as "LSE student, PhD in History" and gave his address as that of LSE - including a specific office room number which is actually used by a genuine member of LSE staff. Students report that the North Korean guides during the visit repeatedly addressed him as "Professor" and that he actively went along with that. John Sweeney graduated from LSE in 1980 with a BSc in Government. He is not an LSE student. If he has a PhD in History (or anything else), it is not from LSE. He does not work for the LSE.

We have no information about how Mr Niakaris or Ms Sweeney may have described themselves in order to gain entry to North Korea, but no description of them as current LSE students or staff can have been accurate.

While this particular trip was run in the name of a student society, the nature of LSE's teaching and research means that aspects of North Korea are legitimate objects of study in several of our academic disciplines. Indeed, LSE academics work on aspects of many politically sensitive parts of the world, including by travel to those locations. It is vital that their integrity is taken for granted and their academic freedom preserved. The BBC's actions may do serious damage to LSE's reputation for academic integrity and may have seriously compromised the future ability of LSE students and staff to undertake legitimate study of North Korea, and very possibly of other countries where suspicion of independent academic work runs high.

Finally, LSE is aware of grave concerns about the actions of the BBC raised by at least two students who took part in the visit and the parents of one.

In light of all of the above, the Chairman of LSE asked the BBC on 10 April to withdraw the planned programme and issue a full apology to LSE for the actions of BBC staff in using the School and its good reputation as a means of deception. This endangered the students and could endanger academics in the future.

LSE deeply regrets that, earlier this afternoon, the Director-General of the BBC has refused the Chairman's request.

LSE is fully supportive of the principle of investigative journalism in the public interest, and applauds the work of journalists in dangerous parts of the world. We cannot, however, condone the use of our name, or the use of our students, as cover for such activities.

The School stands ready to discuss with any student or member of staff who so wishes how best to address the possible difficulties which the actions of the BBC may entail for them in future.

[thehighlandrebel]

Kind of ironic.
Al Beeb drones on about how wonderful a socialist paradise would be yet are denied entrance to the most utopian socialist paradise in the world.

[Teddy Bear]

Yes but the 'socialist paradise' that they want, sees themselves running it.

[Teddy Bear]

The BBC justifies putting these students at risk on the basis that it's worthwhile for their own journalistic purposes. They admit that they didn't reveal the full extent of their deception to the students however, and there are some students who claim that they were not even told that the LSE professor accompanying them was in fact a BBC journalist. None of them were told that were in fact 3 journalists there who would be secretly filming.

Now whether this triad of journalists were secretly filming or not, there is no question that none of them would have been allowed to visit any site or place that the N. Koreans did not wish them to see. We are already well aware of what the dynamics of this country are, so what is this journalist claiming his exposee to reveal, that makes it worthwhile to put these students at risk, as well as making future trips by students to 'unsavoury' lands likely put under intense scrutiny?

Certainly if I was a student I would want to know and understand what any gains were likely to be so I could weigh them against the potential risks. The fact that the BBC didn't reveal their complicity in
1. Arranging the trip to begin with, under the pretext of it being arranged by LSE.
2. Not telling any of the students who had each paid over £1500 for the trip until they were in Beijing.
3. Not revealing their full agenda and purpose to the students.
4. Not told the students what would happen to them by the Koreans if the journalistic purpose was discovered.

We already knew the dynamics of North Korea, all this documentary has so far revealed is those of the BBC, and they certainly are not savoury.

I'll watch the Panorama programme this evening to see if anything revealed by it was worth the deception, or simply a journalist, who has been involved in some questionable goings on before, is simply wanting to get some publicity for himself, regardless at the risk to innocents.

Students on BBC's North Korea trip 'have received threats' from rogue state as Corporation says decision to go ahead with Panorama film 'went right to the top'

• Ceri Thomas says decision to broadcast went 'right to the top' of the BBC
  
• He rejected claims students were forced into taking unacceptable risks
  
• Panorama documentary will air tonight, despite criticism of corporation
  
• LSE authorities had 'no knowledge of trip' or of its planning' they said
  

By Vanessa Allen and Helen Lawson



North Korea has threatened to make public all passport data and personal information of students who travelled to the country with an undercover BBC team, it emerged today.

The communist state fired off a furious e-mail to students of the London School of Economics (LSE) after it discovered they had entered the country with Panorama reporter John Sweeney who had posed as a history professor to film an expose.

After arriving back in the UK, they were contacted by a representative of the North Korean government complaining that 'Mr John Paul Sweeney is not an LSE History Professor as declared, but a BBC journalist that joined your LSE students group undercover.'

Had the journalists been caught there, the whole group would have faced arrest, interrogation and possible detention.

In the e-mail, seen by Mail Online, the official went on to say: 'I warn you that I will make public to the world and the international press the lies made in the name of LSE students.

'I reserve the right to make public and publish all personal data, including all your passports, to demonstrate that while we have been direct and honest with you, you have broken the DPRK law.'

The director of the London School of Economics (LSE), Craig Calhoun, earlier said claimed its students had been compromised by the decision to allow a Panorama team to travel with them.

Mr Calhoun told the Guardian: 'We have received complaints from North Korean authorities – and some of the students who went on the trip have received threats'

He said LSE had heard from other students who were being advised to cancel foreign trips over the summer as a result of row.

He said: 'It affects not just the LSE and North Korea, it affects trips that are not undercover or spying trips.

'Lots of countries will now be problematic because of John Sweeney and the Panorama programme which the BBC has stood by.'

Earlier, the corporation’s head of news programming said the decision to go ahead with a controversial BBC documentary about North Korea in which students claimed there used as human shields went 'right to the top'.
ranting graphic.jpg

Ceri Thomas made the comment as he rejected claims that British students had been forced to run unacceptable risks during undercover filming of the investigation.

The BBC has also refused to cave in to mounting pressure to drop the documentary, which it plans to run tonight.

Sir Peter Sutherland, chairman of LSE's court of governors, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that some of the party had not been fully informed about the plans before leaving.

'I am amazed that the case is being made that in some way these students, misled, going into a most dangerous place - perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth - should be forced to allow a programme to take place that they oppose,' he said.

Three students have since complained and the BBC has agreed to pixelate their images.

Parents and university officials claim the students – the youngest of whom was only 18 – were ‘deliberately misled’ by the BBC and have called on the broadcaster to apologise and drop the documentary.

Mr Thomas denied that briefing of the students had been 'shambolic', insisting they had been repeatedly spoken to individually and as a group.

'We think the risks as we explained them to the students were justified,' he said.

'But I need to be absolutely clear that if we had any suggestion that lives were at risk or anything approaching that - either the BBC team's lives or the lives of the students - then we wouldn't have gone anywhere near this.'

Asked how high up the BBC chain authorisation for the programme had gone, Mr Thomas said: 'This went right to the top.'

Pressed on whether that meant the then-acting director general Tim Davie had signed off on the plans in advance, Mr Thomas replied: 'I can't be sure that Tim Davie did. I know that Tony Hall (the current director general) has been involved in recent days.'

He called the programme an ‘important piece of public interest journalism’.

‘The only people we deceived in the making of this film were the North Korean government,’ he added.

The students were invited on the trip via an LSE club, only to learn much later it had been organised by Panorama as a cover for its investigation.

Journalist John Sweeney insisted the students had all agreed to enter the rogue Communist state with him, but admitted he withheld some details of the trip on the advice of BBC risk assessors.

The LSE said its students were not given enough information to give their consent and accused the BBC of taking unacceptable risks at a time when sabre-rattling by North Korea had already raised tensions with the West.

Alex Peters-Day, general secretary of LSE Students’ Union said students and the university had been ‘manipulated’.

‘I think the trip was organised by the BBC as a ruse to get into North Korea and that’s disgraceful,’ she said. ‘They have used students essentially as a human shield in this situation.’

But one member of the party wrote to LSE's student newspaper, The Beaver, to say they had not been informed by the BBC of the risks, the Times said.

The anonymous student was reported as saying: 'Contrary to what the BBC spokesperson insists, I have never been informed of the risks that I faced being in North Korea with the one print journalist who I agreed to travel with.

'I was never told that I could be held in detention or that I risked not being able to return to the country.

'Furthermore, because we were informed that there are only two flights out of Pyongyang to Beijing per week, we would not have been able to leave even if we had insisted on no longer being part of the trip, as the nature of what we had consented to changed.

'Because most of the consenting was done in private conversations between a student and Tomiko (Mr Sweeney's wife) or Alexander (the other BBC journalist), what each student consented to varies.'

Students have since received ‘threatening’ letters from North Korean authorities and one parent has complained in writing to new BBC director-general Lord Hall that their child was put in danger.

The parent wrote: ‘The methods adopted potentially endangered a number of students who believed they were participating in an organised student tour. I am outraged that in this case the BBC, without obtaining “informed consent”... deceived, used and endangered these students to obtain a story from North Korea.’

The row could prove embarrassing for Lord Hall, appointed after his predecessor George Entwistle quit in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and the botched Newsnight report which led to Lord McAlpine being wrongly identified as a paedophile.

A producer for Panorama resigned earlier this month over claims the programme tried to bribe a security consultant to reveal information about a property developer.

The LSE said it was not given any warning about the BBC’s plans until last week, after the group returned. It said the deception had put the students in danger and had jeopardised the safety of its academics working in other high-risk countries.

The students volunteered for the trip through the Grimshaw Club, a student society linked to the LSE’s department of international relations. Sweeney’s wife Tomiko Newson, an LSE graduate, had organised a group tour of North Korea with the club in 2012 and students were told she was organising this year’s trip.

They were told in London that a journalist would join them. But they were not told of Miss Newson’s links to Panorama or Sweeney until they reached Beijing.

There, as they waited to board the flight to Pyongyang, they were told that a Panorama film crew, including the high-profile investigative journalist, would be travelling with them for the eight-day trip.

Journalists are banned from entering North Korea without visas and government minders, so Sweeney posed as a history professor.
libya graphic.jpg

The reporter – who was once filmed ranting at a Scientology leader during a documentary – likened North Korea to a ‘Nazi state’ and called the experience more frightening than travelling inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

He said: ‘It’s extraordinarily scary, dark and evil.’

Sweeney said the BBC’s ‘high risk team’ had wanted the students to be kept in the dark so they could not be accused of being complicit in the subterfuge if it was discovered by the North Koreans.

‘If we got into North Korea and I got busted and I’m a journalist, then we were worried, properly and rightly, for the students.

'So we did not want to tell them everything that we were doing because it would increase the risk for them,’ he said.

Sweeney said he believed the majority of the students supported the Panorama film and praised them as ‘brave and good people’.

But the parent who wrote to Lord Hall, who asked not to be identified, said their child had not been told of any journalistic involvement until after they had paid £1,969 for their place on the trip.

The BBC admits the group was not told about Panorama’s involvement until they were in Beijing. One said they were told the delay was ‘for your own safety’.

LSE deputy director Professor George Gaskell said: ‘We were told the BBC had undertaken a risk assessment and it had been approved at the highest level.

‘The LSE believes that any reasonable assessor of risk – or indeed any parent contemplating their son or daughter going on such a trip with the involvement of the BBC – would have thought the risks quite unacceptable.’

Gaining false admission to North Korea is punishable by imprisonment and heavy fines.

A BBC spokesman said Mr Sweeney’s wife had organised the trip before Panorama became involved.

'All of the students in the group were of an age to give informed consent being between 18 and 28 years old,' said the spokesman, 'a dialogue with them has continued since their return.

'We do not, and never did, intend to make any reference to the LSE in the programme.The actions of the programme team in relation to its contributors were, we believe, proportionate to the subject matter, as is required in the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.'

[Teddy Bear]

I'm glad to see somebody in government is taking this seriously.

BBC 'must publish evidence over LSE North Korea film'
BBC chief Tony Hall faced criticism over his handling of a controversial documentary into communist North Korea today after it emerged that authorisation for the programme went “right to the top”.


By Graeme Paton

The corporation’s new director-general was urged to publish all evidence surrounding claims that the BBC obtained full permission from university students before using them as “human shields” to get into the secretive state.

It also emerged that Lord Hall – who only took up his post earlier this month – would be ordered before a cross-party committee of MPs to answer charges that the corporation put undergraduates at serious risk over the affair.

The comments were made amid an escalating row between the BBC and the London School of Economics over the controversial Panorama exposé into life within the “most rigidly-controlled nation on Earth”.
A three-strong BBC team – led by reporter John Sweeney – travelled to North Korea last month posing as members of the LSE’s Grimshaw Club, a student society that forms part of the International Relations Department.

The trip was organised by Mr Sweeney’s wife, who had been studying at the LSE until last year, and advertised through the society’s mailing list.
According to the LSE, students were deliberately given “limited information about the plan”, initially being told that one journalist would join the group. They were only informed of the two-man camera crew during a stopover in Beijing and LSE management were kept completely in the dark until last week.

Alex Peters-Day, general secretary of the LSE Students' Union, said the BBC had "used students essentially as a human shield.”

The LSE had called for the half-hour film – due to be shown on Monday evening – to be pulled altogether, although the request was refused by the BBC.

In a series of fresh developments on Monday, it emerged that:

• Mr Sweeney – an LSE graduate – used an alumni email account and described himself as "Dr John Paul Sweeney, Phd History", complete with an office at the university, to get a North Korean visa;

• A student who took part in the trip told the LSE student newspaper that they were “not made aware of the presence of several BBC journalists at the time of the flight to Pyongyang” and were led to believe that “John Sweeney was a history professor”;

• Prof Craig Calhoun, the LSE director, weighed into the row for the first time, confirming that some of the students on the trip had received “threatening” letters from the North Korean government on their return and other undergraduates had been advised to cancel forthcoming trips overseas;

• One of the student representatives on the LSE's governing body called for Mr Sweeney’s alumni status to be revoked, saying he should no longer "be associated with the LSE”;

• The Royal Society and British Academy, which represent the sciences and humanities, respectively, released a joint statement, claiming that Panorama risked damaging the “the credibility and security of UK academics working overseas in highly sensitive circumstances”.

On Monday, Lord Hall was also dragged into the row, posing a fresh crisis for his leadership of the BBC just days after controversy over the corporation’s decision to air a clip of “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead”, the song propelled to number two in the charts by opponents of Baroness Thatcher.

Speaking on Monday, Ceri Thomas, BBC head of news, denied that the briefing of the students had been "shambolic", insisting they had been repeatedly spoken to individually and as a group.

Asked how high up the BBC chain authorisation for the programme had gone, Mr Thomas said: "This went right to the top."

“I know that Tony Hall has been involved in recent days,” he said.
But the comments prompted calls from Ben Bradshaw, the former Labour culture secretary and an ex-BBC journalist, to publish evidence that it obtained permission from the students.

He said he was “amazed that there was no written consent” from students and that the “LSE’s consent wasn’t sought".

"With students, or some of the students, challenging the BBC's account, the BBC must now publish all of the emails and written evidence that it has to support its conjecture that there was full consent," he said.
Mr Bradshaw, a member of the Commons culture select committee, said MPs had summoned Lord Hall to appear in coming weeks, but added the action needed to be taken “sooner than that”.

“We know from recent experience that when the BBC is in the middle of a controversy like this that it needs to act quickly,” he said. “Just tell the truth; get the information out there and then people can make their own minds up… At the moment, the LSE and, it seems, some of these students are very angry and it would seem with some justification.”

[Teddy Bear]

So far nothing that we didn’t know already, and archive films of ‘sensitive’ areas and scenes.

Since except for the word ‘Islam’, so much is like the strategy of Islamic regimes, and for exactly the same purpose, to conceal its own failures and despotic rule, why hasn’t the BBC made similar documentaries on the other regimes?

I also wonder if the BBC gave a thought at all at what might be the repercussions to any North Korean who would have revealed 'sensitive, critical, or undesirable' information from the NK government point of view.

I can imagine Sweeney thinking he had a 'scoop' and never mind what would happen to the poor sod who divulged that information. As it is we don't know what will happen to any of the guides, or those spoken to during their filming.

[Teddy Bear]

Max Hastings at the Mail also fails to see anything that came from this documentary that justified the risks to the students.

Students put at risk for an ego-boosting stunt and why we need a total purge of BBC top brass

By Max Hastings

What induced ten LSE post-graduate students to make a ‘study trip’ to North Korea? Was it the cuisine, the wine, the scenery, the nightlife? The prospect of making new friends?

Or to see what Britain might have looked like, had Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn won the class war?

No matter. They travelled, and glimpsed a demented totalitarian socialist state. But they came safe home again only by the mercy of providence.

Had this TV crew been unmasked, at best, the students would have been bundled out of North Korea.

More likely, however, in the present state of nuclear confrontation between the Pyongyang regime and the West, they would all have been thrown in jail, perhaps for months.

This has been the fate of several visitors in recent years.

It appears the students were told of the BBC team’s presence only in Beijing, en route to Korea. There is still argument about exactly who knew what when, but it seems certain that the London School of Economics, which lent its name to the trip, knew nothing of the undercover TV operation until it was over.

It is unlikely that the tour party understood the grave risks they ran for the greater glory of Panorama.

If one of my children had been among the students in the North Korean party, I would have been outside Broadcasting House this week demanding blood.

The upshot of all this is that the LSE’s chairman accuses the BBC of gross irresponsibility. For its part, the Corporation remains defiant, claiming that its actions were ‘strongly in the public interest’.

In the eyes of many people, those in charge at Broadcasting House have once more laid bare their paucity of judgment.

Familiar questions are being asked about flawed ethics and lack of grip. Of course, undercover journalism has a long and mostly honourable history. Reporters have often adopted disguises as the only means to expose crooked politicians and businessmen. Such so-called ‘sting’ operations, for example by those posing as foreign businessmen or sheikhs, are sometimes criticised.

But there is undoubtedly a convincing public interest defence when concealed microphones provoke men and women in public positions into revealing greed and immorality.

An example was the recent exposure by a Sunday newspaper of several retired, top-ranking military officers who boasted about lobbying to win multi-million-pound defence deals for arms firms, in breach of official rules.

As a young reporter in 1973, I used subterfuge to get a story.

It was the time when the white minority regime in Rhodesia was fighting a savage civil war with black terrorists. Journalists were barred from the operational areas.

I flew to Harare (Salisbury, as it then was) in the guise of a safari tourist, and travelled the country for a fortnight, staying on white farms, to find out the truth about what was happening in Rhodesia.

My hosts were paid for their hospitality, but were obviously pretty sore afterwards that I had deceived them about my real identity and intentions.

But had I been found out, my subterfuge would have only hurt me — unlike the case with the LSE students’ visit to North Korea. For, of course, everything changes if such stunts put innocent bystanders at risk.

As an editor, I was once asked if the Daily Telegraph would provide credentials for members of the Secret Service, which would have enabled undercover officers to operate more freely. I refused.

I do my best to be patriotic, but in many parts of the world, journalists find themselves endangered because governments or political factions think they are spies.

Scores of journalists die violently anyway while pursuing stories in dangerous places.

If real spies are able to masquerade as journalists, what is likely to happen the next time a correspondent falls into the hands of, say, Islamist fanatics? And so back to the BBC and its Panorama team.

I blame John Sweeney — the reporter who went undercover to North Korea — much less than his bosses.

Ambitious journalists dream up wild ideas every day. For example, 40 years ago, when I was working for BBC Current Affairs, I proposed stupider schemes than Sweeney’s. Like him, I was always eager for an ego-boosting adventure.

But the job of editors and executives is to keep their heads when young turks lose them. It should have taken the Suits at Broadcasting House only 30 seconds to say to Sweeney: ‘Not a chance! If you go into North Korea with a student group and get caught, the whole lot of you could get locked up.’

This was not an assignment to East Sheen or Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was a trip to a country ruled by the most erratic and brutal government on earth, which has starved or shot millions of its own people and even some foreigners.

The BBC’s defence, that this was ‘an important piece of public interest journalism’, does not stand serious scrutiny.

The Panorama crew had not shot footage of North Korea’s secret missile plants, its concentration camps or even the pizza parlour where the country’s Young Leader buys his dinners.

Nor had they interviewed the country’s politburo.

There was no terrific scoop. The only prize of Sweeney’s gamble was footage of a grey, ghastly country where personal liberty is extinct and the economy has almost ceased to function. Of course, we knew that already.

It is almost impossible to believe the Panorama team has achieved anything of significance, beyond using a secret TV camera in a country where this is forbidden.

The most dismaying aspect of this latest BBC controversy is that advance authorisation for the trip was apparently given ‘right from the top’ of the Corporation. Moreover, since the subsequent row exploded and the director of the LSE revealed that some students received threats from the communist state after returning to the UK, the BBC hierarchy remained obdurate in its refusal to drop the film’s transmission.

So blame for a serious failure of editorial judgment goes all the way up.

I am an admirer of Tony Hall, the former head of the Royal Opera House who took over as BBC director general less than a fortnight ago.

He seemed by far the best qualified candidate for the job.

Thus it is depressing to learn that Hall personally approved the decision to screen last night’s programme, even when the circumstances in which it was shot mean that the project has been discredited.

The BBC is still on crutches after the reputational disasters of the Jimmy Savile saga and the suppressed Newsnight investigation of his crimes.

Just one sacking and a handful of cosy job changes followed the independent report’s exposure of devastating and systemic management failures.

The Head of News, Helen Boaden, on whose watch it all happened, was nudged sideways to become Head of Radio, instead of disappearing into the deep hole where she belongs.

The former Times editor James Harding, whose appointment as the new head of news was announced last night, faces a Herculean task. The whole culture needs to be changed.

Everyone I respect at the sharp end of BBC current affairs believes a wholesale purge of senior executives is long overdue. Half of them do non-jobs which should be abolished, and the other half are unfit for their responsibilities.

Panorama’s North Korea adventure lays bare the collective absence of judgment at Broadcasting House.

Sneaking into North Korea was never likely to produce anything remotely justifying the risks.

Using a student group to provide cover for the BBC team made the venture grotesquely irresponsible.

Screening the programme after these blunders became known suggests that the BBC has learned nothing from its recent disgraces.

A culture prevails there which, in its own way, is as corrupt as that which created the newspaper phone-hacking scandal.

Even so, it has to be said programme makers still do some things very well, most of them on Radio 4.

But the Corporation’s top deck is overmanned, overpaid, and — as the Panorama scandal highlights — unfit for office.

[Teddy Bear]

My estimation at the beginning of this thread that the BBC would use this to portray themselves as 'fearless finders of the truth', has proved to be 100% correct.
Even though the BBC Trust has confirmed that the BBC breached safety guidelines by not informing participants of the risks in advance, something that was clearly a no brainer, the BBC manage to get away with it without any real penalty and are still referring to how brave they are in the pursuit of truth.

Just like we've seen when reporting on Islam.

BBC Panorama breached safety guidelines by sending undercover team into North Korea using LSE students, internal report finds

• Trust said corporation failed to warn students of risk of trip
• Concluded there was 'public interest' in broadcasting the programme
• But editorial standards said there were 'serious failings'
• Reporter John Sweeney spent eight days in the rogue state with group
• He pretended to be part of the university on trip organised by his wife
• LSE asked for the programme to be pulled, but it was still aired last year

By Wills Robinson

A controversial BBC Panorama programme which sent an undercover team into North Korea, pretending to be a group of LSE students, has breached a number of editorial guidelines.

A report by the corporation's Trust said the BBC failed to ensure the students were aware of the risks involved in the trip.

The BBC has subsequently apologised to the university after the publication concluded LSE experienced 'unfair treatment' because it ended up being linked to the controversial investigation.

For the programme, North Korea Undercover, reporter John Sweeney spent eight days in the pariah state, joining an organised tour which had been planned by his wife, Tomiko Newson.

When the film came to light, it was condemned by senior officials from the university who asked for the programme not to be shown.

But it was screened as planned in April 2013, leading to a complaint from the father of one of the students involved.

Although the Trust believed there was a 'strong public interest' in the broadcast, it said the BBC 'failed to consider a number of important issues and risks, and failed to deal with them appropriately'.

In its report published today, the Trust’s editorial standards committee said: 'The provision of information to the students who took part in the trip was insufficient and inadequate, and meant the daughter of the complainant did not possess the knowledge necessary to give informed consent.'

In order to gain the appropriate paperwork, the team had used LSE address details for their visa applications. Today’s report said doing so was 'inappropriate and this, combined with other factors, risked linking the LSE with the trip and resulted in unfair treatment to the LSE'.

It went on: 'From the moment the BBC became involved in the trip to North Korea, Tomiko Newson (who was the trip organiser and tour leader) had a conflict of interest which was further compounded when she became employed by the BBC.

'The BBC should have ensured there was someone independent of the programme team present to lead the trip.

Alison Hastings, who chairs the Trust’s editorial standards committee, said: 'Discovering stories in difficult or dangerous places is one of the BBC’s greatest strengths.

'There was a real public interest in making this programme in North Korea but, in the Trust’s view, the BBC failed to ensure that all the young adults Panorama travelled with were sufficiently aware of any potential risks to enable them to give informed consent.

'This was a serious failing, and the BBC is right to apologise to the complainants.'

Sweeney was also accompanied by a cameraman/producer from Panorama in order to make their film and they travelled around the country on a tour given by North Korean guides, and they recorded their visit on the sort of cameras tourists would use, rather than taking specialist equipment.

The Trust found that the problems lay with the gathering rather than the broadcast of the material.

At the time of the broadcast concerns were raised about the impact the programme could have on academics working in sensitive areas around the world.

Following their return from the £2,000-a-head trip, the students were said to have received an email from a North Korean tourism official which said: 'I reserve the right to make public and publish all personal data, including all your passports, to demonstrate that while we have been direct and honest with you, you have broken the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) law.'

BBC News said it accepted the Trust's decision and said it had apologised to the LSE and the student - referred to as Student X - whose father had complained. But it said that at the time the programme was being made, it believed they were being treated 'fairly'.

In a statement, BBC News said: 'We are pleased that the Trust found that there was a clear and strong public interest in commissioning and broadcasting the programme and that the correct referral procedures and processes were followed by the programme team and senior management.

'We also accept, however, that aspects of the BBC's handling of the project fell short in a number of areas, with the Trust finding against the BBC on four of its 21 rulings.

'In particular we have apologised to Student X for the finding by the Trust that insufficient information was given to her ahead of the trip about the involvement of the BBC journalists and the potential risks, which meant that Student X did not have sufficient knowledge on which to give informed consent.

We have also apologised to the LSE for the Trust's finding that the programme created the risk of harm to the LSE's reputation.

'The Trust recognised that this programme involved a number of finely-balanced editorial judgments and that the BBC spent considerable time evaluating the risks in circumstances which were highly unusual. In the planning for and making of the programme, BBC News believed that it was treating all the students and the LSE fairly.'

During its investigation, the committee was told that the BBC's risk assessment had determined that if the team was discovered, they would try to 'separate' themselves from the students but this could have led to them being more vulnerable.

'The committee considered that, while this might well have been a tactic aimed at isolating the students from further risk, it would inevitably have had the effect of preventing Tomiko Newson acting primarily as group leader, and that the students would have been left, in effect, as a group of young adults from a variety of different countries, all personally responsible for trying to extricate themselves from possible detention,' the report said.

It concluded that it was not viable for her to lead the trip and be certain of being able to act in the best interests of the students in North Korea from the moment the BBC became involved.

But her relationship with Sweeney was not itself a conflict of interest.

Director of the LSE, Professor Craig Calhoun, said: 'LSE welcomes the finding of the Editorial Standards Committee and the letter of apology issued to the school by the BBC Executive.

'LSE would like to confirm its strong support for the production of programmes in the public interest and for journalists working to highlight important issues in dangerous parts of the world.'