BG: In my classes I have to be very careful about not giving them a false sense of what’s going on out there. I think being a foreign correspondent is one of the most exciting professions any man or woman—increasingly women—can choose, but the world is much different than it was when I spent a majority of my time covering conflicts. It’s a meaner place now, and where we had a certain amount of license, or immunity, actually, as Americans and as journalists, in most cases we don’t have that any more. In fact, being a journalist and being an American journalist in some parts of the world can be a liability. So the young men and women who I’m training to go out there to be correspondents, I’m trying to make them very, very aware of this.

Paul McLeary is senior editor of Defense Technology International magazine, and is a former CJR staffer.