Tomorrow evening, the BBC will show a documentary about North Korea by its Panorama team. Even before it has been shown, it is proving to be controversial as the journalists went in as part of a visiting group of LSE students. Differing claims have been made by different sides, but the following seems to be undisputed:
·
The Panorama team went as part
of the group from the Grimshaw Club – a student group affiliated to the LSE’s
Department of International Relations.
·
The team claimed to be LSE students
and therefore going under the cover of the LSE name.
·
The Panorama team deliberately
took the decision not to inform the LSE.
·
The LSE, as with all Universities,
have a duty of care towards their students. Given that they were not informed,
this duty of care could not be exercised or establish whether this duty applied.
·
Panorama claim that they were
under no obligation to inform the LSE as the Grimshaw Club, though a student
society affiliated to the LSE, they are not formally part of it.
·
At least some of the students
involved claim that they were not informed.
·
Panorama insists that they were
told twice that ‘a journalist’ was going.
·
It seems that one of these
occasions was whilst they were on the way to North Korea, and that the onus was
placed on the students to return if they objected, not for the (apparently
singular) journalist to pull out
·
The students were not told that
a group of journalists were going for a major BBC documentary for Panorama.
Panorama does not dispute this.
·
Panorama do claim that they
carried out risk assessments for the investigation.
·
They do not claim that this
risk assessment was shared with the students in full before they left.
·
The consequences for the
students had the cover been blown are unknown, but could very well have been
extremely severe.
Panorama’s claim is that the students were
as well informed as they needed to be, and that the risks from the investigation
was worth it, given the importance of producing the progamme. John Sweeney’s
Twitter time-line also suggests that the students should have worked out that
this was for a Panorama documentary, as he was so famous.
Investigative journalism is of course important. No-one disputes that. Contrary to John Sweeney’s claims however, the issue is not whether North Korean regime is a decent one, nor is it that no such documentaries should be made, nor is it that he was morally wrong to lie to North Korea. Nor does this episode have anything to do with Gaddafi’s involvement with the LSE, despite his attempt to somehow link it that episode with this one.
The primary charge is that Panorama placed students in severe risk without their full and informed consent.
The secondary charge is that this has undermined the possibility of the LSE, and Universities more generally, from undertaking similar research visits to politically contentious countries in the future.
Dealing with the secondary charge first, North Korea is indeed an evil, paranoid state. Eventually, the regime will certainly end and that country will need to be managed by someone, somehow. Getting quality research on the country will be an important contribution towards managing the transition. Given its extreme paranoia however, this example will only make it more likely that it will shut itself from future research – and not just North Korea, but other countries and groups of its ilk.
If the State tracked the movements of investigative journalists in order to find out the location of terrorists they’re interviewing for example, journalists would rightly complain that that would undermine journalistic freedom and independence. They would loudly protest that it created a ‘moral hazard’, making such dangerous work harder and even more dangerous. If they did it without their full consent, it would be deemed atrocious. Essentially, this is the same situation, but instead of the State doing it to journalists, we have journalists doing it to academics.
Turning to the graver first charge, it’s clear that the students were not given all of the facts. The BBC claimed they carried a full risk assessment. I asked John Sweeney whether this assessment was shared with the students, and have yet to receive a reply. Given that they were only told that ‘a journalist’ was accompanying them however, it seems pretty clear that this assessment was not given.
The BBC knew that their actions placed the students in greater risk than they otherwise would be. They knew that if they were caught, the students could very well have been sent to a Gulag for several years of hard labour, as previously discovered journalists were. They also knew that risk for the students was much higher if they were discovered enabling a BBC team for a major documentary, than if it was just for ‘a journalist’. Had the students been discovered and punished by the regime Stalinist means, the damage to to the BBC (to say nothing of the students) would have been immense. Thankfully, that is merely a hypothetical situation, but in assessing whether the BBC was right to do as it did, it needs to be borne in mind.
The fact of the matter is that there is no way it can be argued that the BBC informed the students in full. There is no way it can claim that it posed little greater risk to the students or to academic integrity.
If they thought otherwise, why did they deliberately choose not to inform the LSE? This was almost certainly because it knew it would have problems with the BBC using their students trip – and their lives – for its own ends. No University ethics committee would allow risking the lives of others for research purposes without the participants full and informed consent, yet the BBC seems to have violated that principle with little concern.
Their evasions and sophistry – of choosing to keep the University in the dark, of claiming that the LSE student society has nothing to do with the LSE, of telling the students that ‘a journalist’ would be going rather than a major BBC documentary team, of claiming that the students should have worked out for themselves what was obviously going on (whilst risking the students lives on the hope that the North Korean regime would not) – show that the BBC knew that really, they were in the wrong, but they had other priorities.
Yes, investigative journalism involves risk. That however, does not give journalists the right to place people in the line of fire without their full informed consent. All in all, this is a shameful episode in the BBC's history.
