Local prostitution on Facebook

byHabib Battah
Sep 18, 2013

I didn’t expect to see this on my Time Line. If I was an overzealous blogger or desperate foreign correspondent, I could have written this up as a Syria “spillover”/ end-of-the-world story.

But I’ll wager it’s just the oldest profession in the world, getting a new life on social media. I hope she wears a helmet.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 20 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.