The LSE’s anger about BBC Panorama sounds synthetic and sententious

If I were to make a list of the things I thought the BBC should be doing, then a report from inside North Korea would come right at the top. Obviously, I would rather it were not the fairly ludicrous John Sweeney charged with delivering the report, but hell, you can’t have everything. I’m not sure that the film told us very much we didn’t know, and of course there was Sweeney’s portentous and self-important delivery to contend with. But still, it held the interest and it was an enterprise surely worth undertaking.

The BBC has been savaged, as per usual, by the Daily Mail (among a few others) for having allegedly ‘duped’ students from the LSE into acting as a cover – some even said ‘human shield’ – for the trip to Pyongyang. The BBC, meanwhile, maintains that the students were told twice – including right at the beginning, when the trip was mooted. They would have to be extraordinarily stupid not to have registered that fact inside their skulls.

The LSE’s anger seems to me both synthetic and sententious. I’m absolutely certain it isn’t because the institution (of which I’m an ex-student) is worried that young Kim now won’t buy an annexe for them, or something.  The fact that none of the three students who have allegedly complained that they were in some way duped have not revealed their names suggests to me strongly that the BBC is in the right, and the LSE in the wrong.