Complaints over BBC N Korea trip

Three students have complained after their university study trip to North Korea was used as cover for a BBC documentary on the communist state.

Professor George Gaskell, pro-director at the London School of Economics, said the university authorities were unaware until last week that the BBC had used a 10-person party as cover for an eight-day trip by Panorama to the country.

If veteran journalist John Sweeney had been caught, the party - which included an 18-year-old student - could have found themselves held in solitary confinement in a North Korean prison, said the professor.

On Sunday, the BBC's head of programmes Ceri Thomas admitted the students were not told about a two-man film crew on the trip until they arrived in Beijing, en route to Pyongyang. The LSE is calling for the BBC to pull the documentary, which is due to be broadcast on Monday night.

Professor Gaskell said it could jeopardise the work of its academics who are working in sensitive countries around the world, including China. The BBC has already agreed to pixelate the images of the three students who have complained.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World this Weekend, Professor Gaskell said: "We were told the BBC had undertaken a risk assessment and that it had been approved at the highest level. Now 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.

"The chairman of our council, Peter Sutherland, wrote to Lord Patten (chairman of BBC Trust) and said that in view of this deception the LSE received an unqualified apology from the BBC. I think there is less danger to students than there is to my colleagues. Some of my colleagues at the present are in Africa, China and various other sensitive countries. If there independence and integrity is challenged, they may find themselves in considerable risk."

He added: "We clearly have a different opinion about what is an acceptable risk. I think the situation in which the students found themselves was potentially extremely dangerous.

"Had we been sitting around hearing about this trip for the first time, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, wondering about how we were going to get these students out of solitary confinement in some North Korean jail, I think the students' view on whether it was such a good idea might have been quite different."

But Mr Thomas defended the action and said the documentary was a "very, very important piece of public interest journalism", telling the same programme the access the trip provided - which would not have been given to a journalist - justified putting the lives of the students at risk.