Horrible news broke today regarding American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the Current TV reporters who were detained in March by North Korean soldiers patrolling the border between China and North Korea. According to an editorial in The New York Times, Lee and Ling have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea.

News accounts said they were reporting on North Korean refugees who had fled the country — a highly sensitive issue — although Ms. Ling’s sister told ABC News that the women were working on a report about the trafficking of women from North Korea to China.

Whatever the case, they do not deserve to be sent to a brutal labor camp where, according to international human rights activists and North Korean defectors, detainees endure beatings, hunger and inhumane workloads. With no access to lawyers or due process, the two journalists did not have anything approaching a fair chance to defend themselves.

I met Ling several years ago when Current TV was just starting up. The name Current TV hadn't even been christened yet - people kept referring to it as "Al Gore's TV channel." At the time, people wondered whether or not a news station built mainly on viewer-created content would be credible. Clearly, North Korea is taking the work Lee and Ling were doing quite seriously. 

According to a piece on MSNBC.com,

The journalists were arrested March 17 near the China-North Korea border, and it's unclear whether they tried to sneak into the North or if aggressive border guards crossed into Chinese territory and grabbed them, as has happened before. A cameraman and their local guide escaped.

The North accused the reporters of unspecified "hostile acts" and illegally entering the country, but the formal charges against them were unclear. Their trial began Thursday and foreigners weren't allowed to observe the proceedings.

Relations between the U.S. and North Korea are particularly delicate at the moment, given North Korea's recent nuclear test, and several reports have put forward the theory that the reporters are being used as pawns in a much larger game. For more on the situation, including background on Lee and Ling's initial arrest, watch NBC NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent  Andrea Mitchell's report tonight to bring you up to speed. 

This past Sundance I attended a panel titled "Truth and Consequences," moderated by B. Ruby Rich, which looked at the consequences for filmmakers whose stories speak against the grain of power. During the panel, Rich said, “We are in a new age where countries are trying to copyright themselves. No filmmaker has access to that material. The drawbridge is being raised and we are not being allowed in. Foreign bureaus are being shuttered. How we can find the truth, be a bridge between what is happening in other places that we are not seeing here?" 

Often, the work of documentarians and journalists overlap. Unfortunately, Rich's statement seemst to apply to Lee and Ling's situation, as their pursuit of the truth has left them trapped on the wrong side of the North Korean drawbridge.