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BBC crew 'used students at top university as human shields

The BBC risked the lives of students by using them as a ‘human shield’ for a controversial Panorama journalist and his film crew, it was claimed yesterday.
The undercover team travelled with ten students from the London School of Economics to North Korea last month. Had the journalists been discovered, the whole group would have faced arrest, interrogation and possible detention.
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 Panorama documentary, due to be aired tonight.
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Panorama reporter John Sweeney with a North Korean colonel overlooking the De-Militarised Zone. Three Panorama journalists are said to have put lives in danger as they secretly filmed inside the highly authoritarian country
Panorama reporter John Sweeney with a North Korean colonel overlooking the De-Militarised Zone. Three Panorama journalists are said to have put lives in danger as they secretly filmed inside the highly authoritarian country

 VIDEO  Students furious at being used as 'front' for documentary 

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.
 

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Alex Peters-Day, general secretary of LSE Students’ Union said students and the university had been ‘manipulated’.
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‘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.’
Three of the students have complained, the university says. One said they were not told about key details of the subterfuge until en route for Pyongyang.
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.
In a letter sent to all members of the university, its management said it was not known to the rest of the party that they were three journalists working for or with the BBC in advance of the trip
In a letter sent to all members of the university, its management said it was not known to the rest of the party that they were three journalists working for or with the BBC in advance of the trip
Totalitarian: Kim Jong-un is the dictator of the oppressive and murderous regime
Totalitarian: Kim Jong-un is the dictator of the oppressive and murderous regime
Totalitarian: Kim Jong-un is the dictator of the oppressive and murderous regime
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.
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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 couldnot 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.
BBC head of programmes Ceri Thomas said the deception was justified and refused to drop  the film, defending it as 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.
A BBC spokesman said Mr Sweeney’s wife had organised the trip before Panorama became involved.

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