Amjad Tadros and Justin Schuster discuss how the tragedy of the Syrian conflict gave rise to Syria Direct—a project that trains Syrians in journalism—and may have founded a new tradition that may outlive the conflict.
Looking at Syria, the picture is clear: Bashar al-Assad is winning this war. Russian air power has smashed any remaining semblance of a moderate opposition. The Islamic State is retreating. And the Assad government has emerged as the leading force.
But what this assessment doesn't tell us is the cost of that victory -- the hundreds of thousands killed, the millions displaced, the lives destroyed and the cities reduced to rubble.
Journalists tell that story.
To find a silver lining in a conflict as devastating as the Syrian civil war is next to impossible. But if there is one, it is this: the Assad regime tried to silence the press, but what it instead produced was one of the largest journalistic revolutions of the modern Middle East.