If George Packer Did PR For RFE/RL...

He wouldn’t be half-bad. Seems a Burmese journalist recently asked him why she should bother with the whole reporting thing, given that it’s a thankless, dangerous job in her country. Packer responds:

"The best I could come up with was that one day Burma will change and will need an independent press, and then they’ll be ready. I don’t know if this answer satisfied them any more than it did me."

More satisfactory, perhaps, is the fact that undercover reporting can destabilize a regime (which, incidentally, RFE/RL's record proves) -- the "change" on which Packer hangs his case for keeping the job.