{"id":6226,"date":"2013-04-17T12:28:34","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T16:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=6226"},"modified":"2013-04-17T12:28:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T16:28:34","slug":"the-bbc-crosses-an-ethical-line-in-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/the-bbc-crosses-an-ethical-line-in-north-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"The BBC crosses an ethical line in North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"BBC<\/a>

BBC Panorama presenter, John Sweeney attempts to defend his actions on the BBC. (Source: YouTube\/BBC)<\/p><\/div>\n

If you’ve been a reader of the\u00a0<\/em>SWLing Post for long, you\u00a0may know I am an avid supporter of free speech<\/strong> via radio and other media; I am also a strong advocate of journalistic\u00a0ethics.<\/strong> \u00a0Following, I share choice words about a reporter who ignored one in the claimed pursuit of the other–and why I believe neither was ultimately served.<\/em><\/p>\n

While I’ve written much in support of the BBC World Service, the radio arm of the BBC, I have not had the same favorable view of the television arm of the BBC. \u00a0Recently, I received a concerning email from my post-graduate alma mater,<\/em>\u00a0The London School of Economics<\/a>, which lowered my opinion of the BBC TV producers yet further.<\/p>\n

On Monday night the BBC television show\u00a0Panorama<\/a><\/span><\/em>\u00a0featured an investigative report on\u00a0North Korea by presenter John Sweeney; this investigation, while revealing virtually nothing the western world didn’t already know about North Korea, is receiving inordinate amount of attention–primarily negative. \u00a0Moreover, Sweeney’s report has received a great deal of criticism from the London School of Economics<\/a> (LSE). \u00a0And for good reason.<\/em><\/p>\n

In brief, as I understand it,\u00a0here’s what occurred : \u00a0In 2012, an LSE\u00a0student group, organized by Tomiko Sweeney, wife of BBC\u00a0Panorama<\/em>\u00a0presenter and 1980 LSE alumnus John Sweeney. \u00a0This past March, another such event was organized; but on this\u00a0eight-day student tour of North Korea, there was a striking difference. The LSE students, who of course\u00a0understood the (measurable) risk\u00a0inherent\u00a0in touring a country like North Korea, were merely made aware in advance that there would be “a journalist” among their group. \u00a0But upon their arrival in China and immediately prior to their flight to North Korea,\u00a0the student tour group found that the BBC had sent not one journalist, but rather a\u00a0three-man<\/em>\u00a0investigative<\/em> crew from Panorama<\/em>\u00a0falsely claiming to represent the LSE, with secret plans to film outside the dicatorships’s permissible range; among them,\u00a0Sweeney himself, claiming to be an LSE PhD student. \u00a0In short, the student group\u00a0was unaware of the scope of Sweeney’s orchestrated deception<\/em> until it was underway.<\/p>\n

While in North Korea, Sweeney and his crew proceded to secretly film an investigative report, breaking firm rules imposed on the tour group. \u00a0In so doing, Sweeney knowingly–and\u00a0without prior consent\u00a0from the students–put everyone on the tour at very great risk. If caught, Sweeney, his crew, and the deceived students<\/em> could very well have been imprisoned and forced to work in labor camps indefinitely…or worse. \u00a0Such treatment of journalists is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0unprecedented in North Korea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the full tour group and their illegal digital footage escaped North Korea without incident. \u00a0However, now that North Korea has learned of the investigative report and the deception,\u00a0North Korea has begun to threaten the LSE students on the tour.<\/em><\/p>\n

John Sweeney lied to the North Korean authorities and to the North Korean touring organization–but more to the point, he deceived the LSE students on the tour who served as his front. The BBC sanctioned (and salaried) Sweeney’s cowardly deception. Sweeney admits to lying, and has awkwardly attempted to justify his actions by stating that the students are “adults” and therefore “aware of the risk…this isn’t Toramolinos [a Spanish vacation locale].” \u00a0It now seems quite clear that Sweeney never fully disclosed to the students the degree<\/em> of risk to which he would be subjecting them, which is only now unfolding in threatening letters from North Korea to the students themselves. \u00a0These threats warned against airing Sweeney’s program, and the LSE promptly made this concern known to the BBC. \u00a0Sweeney aired the program anyway.<\/p>\n

As for this television report for which Sweeney risked these students’ lives and futures? \u00a0The painful fact is that Sweeney’s product is neither insightful nor even particularly interesting.<\/p>\n

Crossing the line<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regardless of reason, Sweeney capriciously and foolishly ignored a basic journalistic ethic called the harm limitation principle<\/a>;\u00a0according to the Society of Professional Journalists<\/a>:\u00a0“Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.” While it states that an ethical journalist “recognize[s] that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort,” it continues:\u00a0“Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, one expects there to be some “harm or discomfort” during the course of investigative reporting, especially investigation of a closed dictatorship that is actually insightful or relevatory. But reporters such as Sweeney and his crew are paid–and paid well,<\/em> I might add–to take such risks. The LSE students he used as a cover–essentially as human shields–were not<\/em> paid by the BBC for\u00a0the unremarkable reporting that was to put them in harm’s way to a greater degree than they knew.\u00a0The BBC and Sweeney believed that the students’ personal sacrifice\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0the reputation of the LSE were secondary to the content contained in their report.<\/p>\n

If the BBC wanted an investigative report from North Korea, they should have paid professional actors and\/or journalists\u00a0who fully understood the risks and were amply compensated for them to\u00a0pose<\/em>\u00a0as students.\u00a0Instead, the BBC used,\u00a0in every sense of the word,\u00a0a group of university students. BBC Panorama\u00a0<\/em>seemed to view these individuals as expendable.<\/p>\n

One can only imagine the students’ dismay at being caught in this web of deception, with the North Koreans weaving their own web such as exists in any closed dictatorship, while Sweeney and the BBC entangle them in yet another, perhaps more insidious, web of deceit. \u00a0As a result, avenues of study, careers, reputations, lives–all have been cut off or jeopardized by Sweeney’s selfish, cowardly, and truly pointless actions in conducting this investigation under these circumstances.<\/p>\n

While watching this BBC interview of the bumbling John Sweeney in his attempts at justification, one cannot help but recall the test of an ethical journalist which Sweeney fails:\u00a0“Pursuit of the news is <\/em>not a license for arrogance”<\/em>:<\/p>\n