Panorama is the world’s oldest documentary news program, running on the BBC since 1953. To do a piece on North Korea, Panorama investigator John Sweeney wanted to get into the country.

Sweeney’s persistent. Despite abundant harassment, he did two shows about Scientology. To report on mass graves in Zimbabwe at a time when BBC reporters were banned from the country, he hid in the trunk of a car to meet a source. A four-year investigation by Sweeney got three women freed who’d been convicted of killing their babies—who had actually died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.)

So Sweeney wasn’t stopped by the fact that North Korea doesn’t give visas to foreign journalists who would like to come by and chat, look around a little, get to know folks. (For those who have been asking, that is why SorryWatch has not done an on-the-ground survey of North Korean apologies.)

What Sweeney did was arrange a student tour for LSE (London School of Economics) students, without actually going through the LSE. It was “ostensibly arranged by the Grimshaw Club,” as The Guardian puts it. Ah yes, Grimshaw Club, very good. Sweeney posed as a doctoral student. A camera operator came along. The tour organizer was Sweeney’s wife Tomiko Newson, who had arranged a previous, genuine, Grimshaw tour. Sweeney and Newson filled out paperwork for the visa applications, giving the LSE’s address.

The students were over 18. They knew a journalist would be along, though they didn’t know there would be 3, and they didn’t know the plan was for broadcast rather than print. They were briefed in a noisy pub. (The LSE wasn’t told.)

Secretive North Korea, here we come!

By the time they got to Beijing, en route to Pyongyang, the students had a joke that the camera operator, Alex Niakaris, was a spy. Feeling that this joke would not be good to make in North Korea, it was explained to the students that Niakaris was another journalist, undercover, so PLEASE STOP CALLING HIM A SPY.

Of course, once they arrived, there were official North Korean guides. If there had been any trouble with authorities, Sweeney, Newson, and Niakaris had a plan to peel off from the tour. Leaving the students on their own. Another thing they did not mention to said students.

The tour went ahead. No one was exposed as a spy or, worse, a journalist. No one was detained and tortured.

The guides showed the group thermonuclear laboratories, vacation homes of the country’s leaders, and statistical breakdowns of the health and nutrition status of citizens.

Yeah, no, that’s a lie. Actually, they showed them hotels. Monuments. A public square with roller skaters. Mausoleums. A bottling plant. Statues. A model house. Karaoke. A library. (Aha! They were unable to show Sweeney a copy of 1984.) A subway station. A hospital with no visible patients. A circus.

Also, the DMZ. “Today, it’s eerily quiet,” intoned Sweeney on camera.

The half-hour program was duly produced. Excitingly titled “North Korea Undercover,” Over protest from two directions. The father of one of the students – Student X – was angry that his daughter hadn’t been given more information before setting forth. That there was no plan to protect the students if the ruse was discovered. He also expressed concern for the safety of duped North Koreans. Father X asked that the show not be aired.

The LSE was also cross that its name and address had been used on visa applications for this undercover journalism. They figured if the show aired, it would make it harder for LSE groups to visit North Korea.

The BBC said there was “clear public interest” involved. They aired the show , but with the LSE students pixillated out of recognition. (Not the guides, though.)

The BBC’s Head of Programmes said if the ruse had been discovered while in North Korea, probably only Sweeney, Newson, and the cameraman would have been detained. Probably the students would just have been deported. Anyway, if they had told the students too much, they wouldn’t have had “plausible deniability.”

Some of the other “unwitting human fodder” – other students on the tour, that is – said they felt quite well informed, and knew exactly what they were getting into, thank you for your POINTLESS CONCERN, Father X.

The program included lots of talking heads. Interviews with defectors living in South Korea. Stock footage of North Korean military parades. Ranting on North Korean TV. Footage from Yodok, a North Korean prison camp, which Panorama daringly took from Youtube.

They managed to use some footage from the tour. Shots of Sweeney surveying things grimly. Sweeney looking out the window of the tour bus. From the bus they saw winter streets. A woman washing clothes in a river. A bus stop. Power outages. Sweeney said “You can feel the tension rising.”

In one scene, Sweeney and Niakaris have sneaked out of their spa hotel. Sweeney rests a gloved hand on the high barbed wire fence that surrounds the hotel. He speaks portentously. “So. Welcome to the real North Korea.”

None of this appeased the LSE or Father X. They kept complaining to the BBC Trust. The Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee accepted the complaints, looked into the matter, and produced an exhaustive report.

The report found that things were done wrongly. It wasn’t fair to the LSE to use them – and specifically their address – as cover. A pub is not an “appropriate venue” for getting informed consent. There were problems with Newson’s participation.

Accordingly, they apologized. Here’s the letter they sent to the LSE.

Dear Sir Peter,

The BBC Trust Editorial Standards Committee will today make public its findings on the LSE’s complaint about our Panorama programme ‘North Korea Undercover’.

We fully accept that the use of the LSE’s address on the North Korea visa applications was inappropriate and that this risked linking the LSE with the trip and resulted in unfair treatment to the LSE.

We also accept that securing informed consent should normally be the priority where a conflict arises between the need to minimise risk and the need to secure informed consent from people who put themselves at risk for the BBC.

While we are pleased that the Trust recognised that we were right to broadcast the programme given the strong public interest justification for broadcasting it, and that we made strenuous efforts to inform those involved, we recognise that we fell short. On behalf of the BBC, I would like to apologise to you and the LSE.

Yours sincerely,

James Harding

Director, BBC News & Current Affairs

The LSE said they welcomed the apology. Plus, “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.”

OK, but it’s not a very good apology. It doesn’t say they’ll do better in the future. It minimizes the harm done to the LSE student groups’ prospects of visiting North Korea, and the harm risked to the students in the trip. And it blows a self-righteous trumpet for the “strong public interest justification” of the program. WE WERE JUST SO THRILLED WITH OURSELVES THAT WE GOT OUR MAN INTO NORTH KOREA! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!?!?!? THAT’S SO AMAZING!

The BBC also sent a letter of apology to Father X. Who was still mad. Who said BBC’s director-general Tony Hall had made “misleading and inaccurate” statements. Who wanted his apology on air.

What about that public interest excuse? In reality the program does not seem to have gained much value from actually getting Sweeney into North Korea. He was never allowed off the beaten path. The closest he came to breaking away from his handlers was the foray onto the grounds on the Potemkin Spa Hotel.

That doesn’t mean the BBC shouldn’t have aired the show, but it does mean their boasting about its overwhelming significance is… unpersuasive.

As David Mason, Professor of Korean Cultural Tourism at NamSeoul University, remarked “That ‘apology’ failed to acknowledge the plain and widely-said truth that their report was worthless, broke no news at all, was mundane, showed nor said anything that dozens of previous reports on NK did. Therefore their claim that there was a public/journalistic interest behind their recklessly putting all future student groups at risk is totally bogus.”

Still, nice try.