Let's hope there are some spectacular revelations in tonight's television programme. Let's hope the risks, assuming that there were any, were justified. If I've got the argument straight, the civil-servant creatives of the BBC either did or didn't warn the LSE students on the trip that they were being infiltrated by state-sponsored broadcasters. No written record exists of whether warnings were issued (and understood), and apparently a trip organiser is married to one of the BBC people. Whatever that signifies.
Once these stories start to unravel, they can't be managed. Love that detail that there's no paper trail, as if today's BBC could operate by word of mouth. [A contemporaneous scribbled record, even? These are journalists, aren't they?] Feel for the LSE bloke indignant that somebody at the BBC said something about the risk to the students being justified by the story. Not clear whether the BBC claims to have a mandate, democratic or otherwise, to make such judgements.
Probably won't be watching. The argument is the only aspect of this programme to have made the news, apart from a short clip of somebody saying "Welcome to the real North Korea" and then being shouted at (so they saw you were filming and didn't arrest you?), and I'm guessing there's nothing to see that we don't know already.
The brave students will be the ones who fly out on the next trip to North Korea. If they get arrested, the argument gets real.
Once these stories start to unravel, they can't be managed. Love that detail that there's no paper trail, as if today's BBC could operate by word of mouth. [A contemporaneous scribbled record, even? These are journalists, aren't they?] Feel for the LSE bloke indignant that somebody at the BBC said something about the risk to the students being justified by the story. Not clear whether the BBC claims to have a mandate, democratic or otherwise, to make such judgements.
Probably won't be watching. The argument is the only aspect of this programme to have made the news, apart from a short clip of somebody saying "Welcome to the real North Korea" and then being shouted at (so they saw you were filming and didn't arrest you?), and I'm guessing there's nothing to see that we don't know already.
The brave students will be the ones who fly out on the next trip to North Korea. If they get arrested, the argument gets real.