Dd you see this?
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.
Also just in from News at Ten
“500,000 chinese died fighting for N Korea in the Korean War, Their enemy was America”
David Rattigan BBC Reporter unaware that it was the United Nations fighting the Korean War!!! WTF
In China the war was officially called the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. The US provided almost 90% of the UN forces hence the Chinese view that they were fighting the US.
Albaman
‘…hence the Chinese view that they were fighting the US.’
So you think the BBC should take ‘the Chinese view’?
Are there any other ‘Chinese views’ on history or current affairs you think our national broadcaster should take up?
Michael Caine fought in the Korea war and he’s not American.
That would make him one of the other 10% then.
Well Albaman, the Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command was from the Scottish Clan MacArthur of Argyll.
I suppose the fiery highlander genes in him made him considered using Atomic bombs against the Chinese.
After the war the U.S. we’re the only country capable of supplying 90% Thank god for that, or would you rather they didn’t ?
Hence the Chinese view that their enemy was America which nicely take us back to where we started.
Yes folks, it’s Groundhog Day! Back to where we started indeed, which is Albaman’s lack of basic verbal reasoning skills. Read the quote again.
The worst bit is that Albathing will feel really pleased with himself and think his argument is irrefutable.
It appears that the North Korean authorities can’t tell the difference between LSE students and BBC employees. Join the club.
There is a difference. A student at LSE is someone who has not yet got a job at the BBC. The BBC employee has, but still thinks they are still a student at the LSE. The difference is the BBC employee has a large salary.
Are we not guilty of knee-jerk ‘anti-bbcism’ here?
The BBC journalist is John Sweeney, who to my mind has done excellent reports and is no way part of the BBC’s otherwise ‘rolling vote Labour campaign’.
He’s also pretty famous, so how could the Muslim terrorist abetting LSE not know he was from the BBC?
I would say John Sweeney has guts going where he goes getting at the truth.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308705/Inside-North-Korea-A-rare-dispatch-deep-lunatic-rogue-state-enslaved-Zombie-Sons.html
It`s just that bit about using students as cover….if they didn`t know and Sweeneys wife got him in on her lanyard, that surely puts students at risk.
As I say-if MY kid had been a dupe on that trip, I`d want retribution.
Sweeney is good-but what possible excuse is there to put students at risk(if that is what he actually did-and his performance on BH this morning means he probably did!)
The problem is that people get so frustrated and angry at the constant bias that is not only just as bad as it has ever been, it seems to creep into ever more programs.
The BBC do some decent things, occasionally, but any feeling of generosity to the organisation is very soon wiped out by the next piece of bias.
It’s not surprising that people take such pleasure in the BBC’s discomfort – however it is caused. There is plenty of it on TV now about the panorama program, and although it’s not a case of bias, I can’t help a wry smile when I see the organisation tearing itself to pieces.
Just as they could never get Al Capone on charges of gangsterism and instead did him for tax evasion, so the BBC appears just too slippery and arrogant and powerful to ever be nailed for its bias. Anything that helps damage this organisation is okayin many peoples eyes.
Well I thought his reasonably argued,moderately toned,post pretty much summed up how I and many people I know feel
Whats more revealing is how you choose to characterise it as ‘far right’
It would appear that Colditz has fallen foul of the mods.
Can’t say I saw anything that was not more damning to his case by being left up (and now leaving one bracing for the irony failures who see a free niche blog as being held to a different standard than their default heroes).
He’s certainly not one who seems to have heeded the words of Pastor Niemoller in his demands for selective spokespersonship.
Plus the fall-back on the trusty petition is now too predictably telling.
Me, I’d prefer to stick with the ballot box or, in the case of non-essential public ‘media’ services few other democratic countries see the need for anyway, market forces via consumer choice rather than compulsion.
If provided, the outcome of that may be less to his tastes, which is possibly why it is avoided at all costs.
“It would appear that Colditz has fallen foul of the mods”
I hope not,I did not think his rhetoric was that extreme and we either support free speech or we don’t
I agree. Biased BBC should work on the principle publish and be dammed.
If he has, an explanation would be welcomed.
Well a free society is “Far Right” relative to Nicked Emus/Colditz, who thinks that everybody should be forced to fund this gravy train, on the grounds that it can instruct us in correct thinking – a correct thought being whatever redistributes wealth (and via a client base – power) into the hands of English hating Stalinist multi-culturalists.
‘Far right’. Not one to exaggerate, our Colditz.
And in doing so putting the freedom if not the lives of others in jeopardy. As much as I loath the type of person who goes to the LSE journalists have to behave ethically.
And if a New International journalist had done this I wonder how the BBC would have reported it.
The BBC are certainly not so understanding when it comes to police officers working undercover.
Hippiepooter, so John Sweeney isn’t indoctrinated with the usual Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation propaganda mind-set? Strange that, since he seems to have decided that NK is not Totalitarian Stalinist Communist State but is, in fact a totally Fascist State. Just to confirm that, NK is a Fascist State. Has everybody got that, NK is not a Stalinist Communist State, it is a Fascist State.
Now have you all been been convinced yet that NK is a Fascist State because during a short section of an interview with Sweeney on Radio4 I heard him mention, totally unchallenged, that NK was a Fascist State, got that, a Fascist State.
And there was I, labouring under the misconception, along with most other people, that NK was the last remaining example of the most extreme form of Stalinist Communism left in the world. But not according to the fair minded, and totally unbiased, John Sweeney who obviously cannot possibly conceive that any State, run by a complete idiot child propped up by a massive military machine, could possibly have any connection with Lovable Leftist Politics, it just has, by definition, to belong to the nasty hated Right Wing Warmongers, something no avowed Stalinist would never do.
Sweeney has to be correct because he spat the description out with venom and, as everybody knows, when a Lefty spits anything out it’s accuracy is in direct proportion to the amount of venom expounded. Yup, Sweeney is definitely a completely inbred Beeboid.
So were they spying, or collaborating? They can’t have been stupid enough to fabricate this scenario just to make a documentary.
Well done BBC in trying to incite a war.
Where is George R when you need him. This evidence of BBC “bias” is currently the Daily Mails lead story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308705/Inside-North-Korea-A-rare-dispatch-deep-lunatic-rogue-state-enslaved-Zombie-Sons.html
I guess those doyens of the right are also trying to “incite a war”.
The slight difference being the DM wasn’t caught using students for protection in North Korea, paid by the British taxpayer.
Wow, only three of them? They usually need 170 staff. Licence fee increase needed. Tory Cuts to blame for underrepresention on school trip. Cameron and Osborne defend austerity measures. Lord Hall-Hall surrenders peerage and gives up 60% of pension. Helen Boaden to take over as DG. Patten moves to Common Ourpose. Russell Brand new anchor (sic) on Newsnight.
“Russell Brand new anchor (sic) on Newsnight. ”
Give him a shave and he’d pass for Emily Maitlis.
Leave him unshaved…Kirsty Wark.
😯 Sexist! 😯 🙄
2X+funny
What a shame that the North Koreans didn’t arrest them and let them face the legal process or whatever pertains in that Socialist Utopia.
One can only quote John McEnroe in response to this comment.
All the comments thus far make very depressing reading.
The BBC missed a trick here. While I do admire the chutzpah to get a good story, they could have taken one of the BBC orchestras on the kind of “good will” mission the New York Philharmonic did a few years ago. Then they could have sent reporters as themselves, plus a few posing as roadies or even a violist.
I’m only half joking.
Actually, IMHO, one of the best stories from a Westerner who actually did spend some time in the lunatic asylum is animator and artist Guy Delisle’s “Pyongyang”. When a Left-wing artist comes back with a bad impression, you know something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
The book doesn’t go into the horror show stuff – that’s not what it’s about, and not the story Delisle was trying to tell. But you really get some idea of the mindset and the fragility of it all.
Pyongyang >>>>>TARGET; PHILIP DAVIES?
Sorry about that. I have no idea what happened there. The URL didn’t even paste into the attempted link, so I don’t know how it ended up pointed at Davies. Link fixed now.
“…the world’s only Communist dynasty..”
For less than a tenner, all the insight you need into North Korea, and more accurate than Sweeney’s political contortionist “facist state”
Thanks David
Was the London Socialist Educariat on a trade mission,
or has Kim Jong-un already bought a doctorate from them?
Excellent. How quickly the Gadaffi links were airbrushed from history, eh? and what a relief for Chakrabati. Coincidence or magic? – you decide.
Now had it been someone like Pinochet the BBC would have been all over the story like a rash, and it would still be going…..
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’. No doubt we’ll hear from Tony Hall about trust being regained, and the BBC integrity for finding out the news as world leading quality.
🙄
If there was a vomit icon I’d use that.
Or perhaps their secret mission is to start up a Pyongyang branch of Common Purpose. Who knows?
LSE to politically split from Beeboids over North Korea?
Really, after all these years?
And Beeboid politically chums, such as Shami Chakrabarti, was so handily placed on the board of governors at the LSE to oversee the financial contributions of the Islamic Gaddafi rulers of Libya to the LSE, and the reward they got in return.
Supplementary.
“BBC report ‘endangers LSE students’:
Panorama programme based on secret footage taken on university field trip to North Korea”
By MATTHEW BELL.
Note the interlocking politics of BBC-LSE:-
” John Sweeney joined a party of students from the London School of Economics who were visiting the secretive communist state.
“Sweeney’s wife is a lecturer at the LSE, which is a part of the University of London. Travelling as her husband, Sweeney did not declare he was a journalist.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-report-endangers-lse-students-panorama-programme-based-on-secret-footage-taken-on-university-field-trip-to-north-korea-8572219.html
So that accounts for one …. who were the other two then?
camera and sound man?
Producer and NUJ rep.
This John Sweeney?
Ha ha – brilliant!
Funny the BBC spokesman on Sky earlier today said that the tour party did know John Sweeney is a journalist. Who to believe?
Priceless !!!
The tour party didn’t know North Korea is the last bastion of Stalinism or that NK supplies rocket technology to Iran and Iraq before that. They undoubteably think Hamas and Hizbullah are freedom fighters, When they say they didn’t know Sweeney was a journalist – I believe them.
Crikey.
If these ‘students’ (still trying get a grasp on what age they were/are, not that it has a bearing if they were duped – if any family member was placed in danger to cover for covert actions I’d be less than impressed) were aware he was a journo, if that’s his undercover cool under pressure technique, heading to a place like NK hoping no one will lose it certainly showed a lot of faith.
Imagine if those famed Pyongyang levels of silver service failed to ensure his egg soldiers were not ‘just so’? The whole shebang may have taken a nasty turn.
As ‘facts’ continue to ooze out, what seems to have been ignored, or swept past, is that this appears to have hit the fan because the LSE top bod(s) complained (which I for sure saw on SKY).
Trying to redirect anything subsequent elsewhere seems typically distracting.
One question answered in my email in-box just now:
Calls for BBC to cancel North Korea Panorama programme
A huge row’s developed over the BBC’s Panorama show, due to be screened tomorrow night. It seems that reporter John Sweeney, no stranger to controversy (ask the Mormons or the Scientologists), got himself into hermetically sealed North Korea as part of a delegation of students from the London School of Economics – posing as a history professor. The university says the students, including one who was just 18, weren’t properly informed about his undercover filming mission – and ended up being put at considerable risk. They’re calling on the BBC to pull the programme from the schedule. The BBC’s head of news programmes, Ceri Thomas, insists the students were “consenting to the risks that were implicit of having a journalist on the trip” – but three of the group have already complained. I’ve been speaking to Mr Thomas on whether the BBC put the students at risk.
http://www.channel4.com/news/bbc-row-over-student-reporter-in-north-korea
OK, so the youngest was an adult, well, unless they end up launching a Grad from Gaza, at which point the BBC would have them pegged as a child.
It seems the highly semantically-precise (what, exactly, is “consenting to the risks that were implicit..” meant to actually mean?) Ceri Thomas at least may have a bit of a dilemma, as his ‘insistence’ seems disputed by those who were by any measure endangered by the BBC one way or another.
And it’s not like the world’s most trusted media monopoly has a great reputation with senior management being told or telling the truth any more, is it {cough} Pollard {cough}?
Certainly more questions to be asked, and people to be held to account.
I wonder who may end up side-stepping, tending garden and getting brought back on more dosh with a new deputy this time?
As to the screening, it’s hard to see what harm there’d be now as what is done is done.
However, a bit of pixelation isn’t really going to help much if the state that is currently threatening WW3 decides a bit of an example needs making on a London street with all those whose visa details they have on file.
If I were an LSE student or teacher I’d be a bit nervous if a guy is in the queue at the local Golden Dragon takeaway with a rolled umbrella… and it isn’t raining.
That old drunk and wife beater, Andy Kershaw, was on the One Show a couple of nights ago saying he regularly holidays in North Korea. Basically, he was saying what a nice place it is and praising it in general.
As he seems to be a shill for the regime, wouldn’t the Beeb have found it cheaper sending the old dipso instead of Sweeney?
How many other Beeboids are in the Kim Vile-but-Dim fan club then ?
John Sweeney is one of the very few at the BBC who has the old newshound instinct to get a story by hook or by crook. I saw a report by him on Belarus about six months ago which is the only report I’ve ever seen on that dictatorship in the MSM.
It is refreshing that, in this era of ‘journalism’ reduced to reading press releases uncritically someone is prepare to go out and get a story.
Sod the Lse.
Ah! A breathe of sanity on this thread (one or two others too, relief!).
Honestly, nearly all the comments on this thread, it’s like walking into some brainwashing ashram!
Can`t agree.
Sweeney is a decent journalist, but to use students as cover without being totally upfront to those travelling(If that is indeed what he did) is a scandal.
If my kids had been put in peril, just so Sweeney could get some footage for the BBC(or an article for the Mail for that matter!)…I`d be livid.
The Hitchens boys did it all years ago, and didn`t use students as cover…the LSE is right to be angry-but seeing as they`re Labour saps, it won`t cause the BBC too many problems.
Same useless uni that took Gahaffis money, and let his boy get a PhD…so they BBC and LSE will no doubt seek a cosy stitch up, keeping the angry parents/students out of the picture.
N.Korea…NHS…BBC…”it`s all rock n roll to me” eh?
Just watched Sky News clip posted on another site.In it LSE director Prof. Graig Calhoun states LSE, were informed that journalist would be on trip but they weren’t told who.
But Sweeney’s wife was accompanying member of staff (Not sure how much longer) Did they think that their was another journalist on board posing as one of the students?
Report goes on “Two students on the trip and a parent of one of those who went to North Korea have also raised concerns about the actions of the BBC.” but continues “”They were given this information, and were reminded of it again, in time to have been able to change their plans if they wanted to.” then concludes “The BBC confirmed to Sky News that the LSE is not mentioned in the programme.” More to this than meets the eye I think
Just seen on sky (I think) that the students were informed of the presence of the BBC only during a short stopover in China before the final hop into North Korea. Would’ve been extremely difficult for any student to back out at that stage – would probably have meant to be left alone and stranded in China.
But does that constitute “and were reminded of it again” I wonder
Yes the whole thing is murky, many questions remain unanswered . When the students were told that a journalist would be amongst their group they don’t seem to have been told that there was in fact at BBC team of three and that they would be making an undercover documentary.
The whole contrivance of the subterfuge seems unnecessary in my opinion. Initial accounts indicate the BBC obtained no greater insight than a holiday maker with a camcorder would have. But we shall see, perhaps.
Personally I don’t think the program will be broadcast. Someone will mention that North Korea is bonkers and might send an assassination team to London. No doubt North Korea has all the personal details of every student that visited. The BBC simply cannot take that chance.
‘difficult for any student to back out at that stage’
Ah… but… it did allow for the claim that ‘they were told’. In Beebworld… sorted.
And it’s not like the BBC has a bit of a reputation for throwing its own to the wolves, be they the odd sacrificial news editor or single mother perhaps a wee bitty mislead as to what her 15 minutes of fame may actually be serving.
At least all who are offered up will know that it is in service of ‘getting it about right’.
And for a fair few in the upper echelons of the BBC who know what’s good for them, usually to the tune of £300kpa+(a lot).
Fair play, but if YOUR darling daughter was off on some misguided trip to N Korea, got caught with a BBC reporter (spy!) in her tour group, tortured, gang raped and then sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment after intervention by the British government, then would you still feel that way?
What about all the university tour groups that go out every year to Zimbabwe, Sudan etc. now security guards will be checking for spies, detaining people at will, ‘questioning’ them, especially the pretty girls or anyone who shows any fight, removing (stealing) cameras etc.
Mission accomplished, I think!
Well, perhaps it may bebe better Not to go to the shithole in the first place?
…members of lefty broadcasting organisation pretend to be members of lefty educational institute to enter crazy lefty utopia.
Imagine if this were news International members, or heaven forbid, Israeli journalists!
if it had been Israelis,doubtless they would have been members of Mossad on an assassination mission
The rest of the media have had overnight to chew on it all, and best I can judge, no one has a clue on the facts yet, which means who did, and is responsible for what remains a bit up in the air and comment currently will need to be speculative.
From what is published so far in justification , it appears to revolve around whether student(s) were pre-advised they were cover for a scoop that could have (but didn’t) backfired.
Whether putting ‘students’ in such a position is professionally responsible still seems selfish and beyond today’s requirements of duty of care.
What seems unarguable is the LSE is not happy with the BBC, given they are the ones complaining loudest (love to see the ‘we think we got it about right’ sod-off reply to that one, all the way up to Lords Hall Hall and Patten).
It is possible this may adversely impact the usual 110% ‘most trusted’ research findings the BBC trots out every so often, as conducted by the always reliably objective Graun and, now, possibly conflicted… LSE.
Just seen the reporter who was disguised as a student.
Those North Korean immigration guys must have been trained by our own Border Agency.
Nothing says ‘student’ like a 60yo with a beard.
The frat parties at Pyongyang College of Further Re-education must be a bit of a let down for any flower of the revolution looking to hook up with a studly post-grad.
Just read your post and its interesting how the acronym BBC and “trots” goes together like a horse and carriage – even if not in the way you intended.
A few journalists, running a covert operation inside the BBC to find out why its such a secretive origination,a job that needs to be done.
I believe North Korea have sent a couple of undercover reporters to infiltrate the BBC and find out why it is so extremely left-wing. 🙂
If they did get in no doubt they would have to sign a gaggig order agreeing not to say anything derogatory.
If all BBC staff are constrained by these quaint things, I think I can see why every member of staff in CECUTT does indeed only intone the single mantra that the BBC gets it about right… no matter what.
Rather raising the question as to what the BBC complaints system is, other than a massive smokescreen and waste of money to look like they self-assess, when by contract they can only discover ponies and roses no matter what as far as the outside world can be allowed to know.
Which seems a rather massive waste of funds.
Which is the exact opposite of what they claim to engage in the complaints process they currently have.
Unique indeed.
Maybe they could start with that NHS New Labour death camp in mid-Staffs.
They`d feel very much at home there to begin with.
What I did find amusing on R4 today was that the journalist in question – apart from being a loud mouthed and objectionable creature who didn’t like having the tables turned on him – described North Korea as a Nazi and a Neo-Nazi state.
It’s just too hard for these people to own up to the fact that North Korea is a COMMUNIST State….
A Communist state, but a very Nationalist and Socialist one.
Nepotism, management muddle, putting young people at risk: The BBC 2013
Tony Hall about to initiate his first internal BBC inquiry?
‘Tony Hall about to initiate his first internal BBC inquiry?’
Hey, Frank, you’re up!
Try and keep the legals below £50,000 per employee this time. Otherwise folk might think the ‘saving licence fee payers money’ excuse is just a cover for censorship… and diverting programming cash to the BBC’s soaring non-programming self-inflicted foul-up slush funds.
another nail in the bBC coffin thats already on its way to the incinerator, – roll on.
“Hack goes on government approved package holiday to show that the BBC is politically balanced.”
In ‘our’ rush to protect the ‘children’ we miss another angle. The BBC were knowingly breaking the laws of a foreign country. I would suggest a F.O.I. on what legal advice was obtained or if any, in accordance with the Guidelines but it would be refused as for the purposes of journalism.
I know that because I sent an F.O.I. on the legal advice obtained before embedding a reporter with Maoist
terrorists,guerillas, militants in India and it was refused.It seems the BBC avoids breaking UK law but anywhere else is fair game.
Coldtits is a useful signpost. If you are in any doubt on an issue, just observe the signpost and go in the opposite direction. You won’t go far wrong.