BBC Journalist Expelled from North Korea for Not Accurately Reporting Regime Propaganda
Here is what happens when journalists who visit North Korea go off script:
Report: North Korea expelled BBC journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team from the country. The BBC said on Monday that its correspondent Wingfield-Hayes, producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard were about to leave the country when they were stopped by North Korean officials at the airport on Friday. They were detained and questioned for eight hours by North Korean officials. Authorities took issue with “disrespectful” reports the team filed in Pyongyang last week.
[Sound bite: Audio footage of report by BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes (English)] “But we’re not allowed to talk to ordinary people. If I turn trying to ask these people, they ran away. Everything we see looks like a set-up.” (…………)
Secretary General O Ryong-il of the North’s National Peace Committee said that Wingfield-Hayes had to sign a statement of apology.
[Sound bite: O Ryong-il – Secretary General, DPRK National Peace Committee (Korean)] “We have decided to expel the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes from the territory of the DPRK and we are going to never admit him again into the country for any report.” [KBS World Radio]
You can read more at the link, but this continues to make me wonder why journalists even bother to go to North Korea if all they get to report on is regime propaganda?
Surely this journalist knew that reports like that from within the country were going to get him in hot water. The information he reported that got him into trouble wasn’t time sensitive and could have waited until he got back to Japan.
The cynic in me wonders … was it all a (well planned) publicity stunt … designed to stir up drama … but not serious enough to get your azz thrown in the clink?
GI Korea said:
I keep thinking the reporters are hoping that a coup will take place just as they are in country, and they get the biggest scoop of the century.
Everything is so staged, and it gets reported as staged every time. Somehow the norKs just keep to the script. “The Show Must Go On!”
@guitard, that is a good point and could be a possibility as well.