Beirut: City of Versions Summary and Analysis

"But being a reporter in Beirut, I quickly discovered, required something more than an appreciation of life's absurdities. Since I was sent to Beirut by UPI only eleven months after being hired, it was on the job there that I really learned how to be a journalist. In some ways, Beirut was the ideal place to practice journalism, in other ways the most frustrating, but in all ways it was unforgettable" (Chapter 3, p. 50). Friedman learns how to be a journalist in Beirut. He really has no formal training and Beirut is not the typical town when he is there. There is literally no government that functions as a unified force or a central place for announcements or fact checking. This places an extra burden on journalists who try to document truth. They use terms such...