China and Russia are deploying powerful new weapons: ideas

SIXTY LUCKY students got the chance to train as journalists last year at African Initiative, a new press agency in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Trainees were given online and in-person lessons in reporting, with the promise that three of them would eventually be hired as full-time staff at the agency. The catch, as reported by Forbidden Stories, a network of investigative journalists, was that African Initiative is run by Russian intelligence.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “The growing battle over the narrative”