"Newsroom managers throughout the Middle East recognize the need for improved standards among the region’s journalists, and training programs are proliferating. It’s no surprise that reporters in places like Iraq need to learn the most basic skills of the craft. But in the rich oil states of the Gulf the sheer diversity of newsrooms, where as many as a dozen nationalities work together, can pose problems as different journalistic cultures clash. All this has turned media training into a large and growing business, with governments and foundations underwriting training work carried out by NGOs, as well as by some of the media industry’s biggest names. Some, however, question the utility of it all. By some estimates as much as $30 million was spent on media training in the Balkans and, by some accounts, things are worse now than they were before the well-meaning Westerners arrived. Moreover, the training environment in the Middle East now involves many of those same players. So in the Middle East, it needs to be asked when the money is spent, what the trainees really will take back to their newsrooms." (Summary)