How Osama Alfitory accidentally became one of Libya's most important fixers during the 2011 revolution (EP 10).
Alfitory's younger brother was volunteering at a field clinic near the Benghazi courthouse — the epicentre of the 2011 protests. He helped a disoriented foreigner: Robert Worth, a New York Times Magazine journalist. Worth asked if someone could help him understand Libya. The brother called Osama.
Alfitory walked into the hotel lobby and found a full pool of international journalists with no fixers and no local access. He introduced them to each other, explained Libya's political geography, and organised access to sources. This was entirely unplanned and entirely unpaid.
Alfitory and his partner Suleiman became so well-known among foreign press that journalists nicknamed them "the A-Team." They worked with dozens of international outlets across the entire arc of the revolution — Benghazi, Ras Lanuf, Brega, Misrata, Sirte — from the first protests through the fall of the regime.
At the end of 2011, a photographer friend called with news: Alfitory had won the Rory Peck Award for Fixer of the Year. His response: what does fixer even mean? He had spent a year doing this at the highest level without knowing it had a name.
A fixer is the local person who makes foreign journalism possible: translating, navigating, arranging access, assessing safety, providing context. Fixers are rarely credited in the final reporting. Alfitory's account is one of the most detailed descriptions of this invisible role available in first-person testimony.