Graeme Wood tries to train a new network of Libyan journalists at the behest of USAID:
All of my students were under 30 and had entered the profession from other pursuits. Ex-nurses, ex–medical students, ex-architects, and ex-engineers showed up, and a few people seemed young enough to have practiced no occupation other than Facebook Revolutionary, straight out of high school. … I preached a gospel of objectivity, freedom from bias, and independence—the canonical American journalistic virtues—and explained why journalists aren’t supposed to shade stories to protect the powerful, or lie, or break the law, or pay their sources, or be paid by them, or pretend to be someone they’re not. The students appreciated the theory but challenged me in practice. Nearly all said, for example, that they would decline to publish a story that made the leaders of the rebel government look bad, at least until the war was finished.
(Photo: Pro-revolution Libyans watch the first live broadcasting of the first locally based television station to operate in Libya since the start of the revolution 'Al-Hurra', at the revolution square in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on May 30, 2011. By Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
The Dish 