At an age when most people would be sitting comfortably behind a desk dreaming of retirement, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Communication and Information Jerome Aumente situated himself in war-torn Serbia in the midst of an impending hostage crisis.
Aumente, founder and former chair of the University’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies, dreamed of a free press and a world with increased emphasis on the international exchange of ideas.
This was 1998, when negotiations had broken down between Richard Holbrooke, special presidential envoy to the Balkans, and Slobodan Milošević, then president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Aumente and his team were scheduled to present a workshop the following day in Belgrade.
“At 3 a.m. a warning was put under the door saying ‘plan to leave immediately,’” Aumente said. Although the minister of communication announced that day that Serbia would take all Americans hostage if there were any attempts to attack or bomb Serbia, Aumente and his team delivered the workshop free of problems.
He began his international work in Poland in 1989, when Solidarity, a non-communist trade union and anti-bureaucratic social movement, had just ushered in a non-communist government. Since Poland was on the fringe of the Soviet empire, they were able to develop a relatively sophisticated press system, but Aumente said they still had a long road to go.
Behind the changes in the political climate was the samizdat, a group of underground journalists that distributed censored publications and informed the anti-communist resistance.
The samizdat were arrested and thrown in jail, which separated their families. Aumente said one journalist smuggled a small copying machine from Warsaw to Krakow; another delivered newspapers in a baby carriage with a baby on top to hide them.
Sent by the U.S. State Department, Aumente worked with the samizdat to create a brand new press system.
“These transitions were very difficult. Former communist workers suddenly had to be in the newsroom with their underground resister colleagues,” he said.
Working with his team, Aumente set up a media center in Warsaw, a school of journalism in Krakow and built a platform for a free press.
Two years ago, he went back to Serbia to conduct a series of workshops.
“Those journalists who were expelled and shut down by their government are now in power, running newspapers and television using the methods we had talked about,” Aumente said. “This is a very vivid example of how when things are terrible eventually they do change. What we did in 1998 was worth it.”
His next project is in Thailand, where he plans to offer programs in environmental health journalism.
Aumente placed great importance on the need for journalists to bind together and help each other. It is important for international groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists to be there on the line when a journalist gets threatened, hurt or thrown in jail, he said.
“One individual journalist is very vulnerable in standing up to censorship, but many journalists together are able to do something about it,” Aumente said.
With enough outside pressure, governments act more fairly, he said.
“We saw this recently with the two journalists that were arrested in North Korea,” Aumente said. “These governments cannot take a chance on becoming so badly scarred by having human rights and press freedom violations. We have to keep putting this pressure on them.”
With all the problems facing journalists internationally, Aumente said journalists are not immune in the U.S.
“We shouldn’t hold the U.S. up as a pure model of journalism,” he said. “There are a number of things that need to be changed. The U.S. press in the 18th and 19th century was rife with political and religious biases. Eventually we had to evolve out of that process. I think the press grows and learns how to deal with these kinds of problems. … The quality press has done a good job of reporting, but the overall tone has become a bit nutty. We need quality information that we know we can use. If we can’t trust the news, then we’re in trouble.”
Aumente said there is always hope in the long term.
“Democracy and freedom of speech is messy,” he said. “Think of it as a marketplace with a bunch of stalls where you can pick up what you want and reject others. As long as we have the ability to add more stalls, positions and points of view, we’ll offset the destructive elements. In the long run more people step in, show the other sides and the issue gets clarified.”
Along with his words of reassurance, Aumente described the tenuous situation the U.S. press faces in regard to the funding of large investigative reports.
“When you look at the press, it’s almost like visiting someone in the intensive care unit,” he said. “Network news viewership has gone from 90 percent to 35 percent. Revenues are down.”
This has lead to budget cuts and less potential for quality investigative reports.
“As quality press cuts back on staff and budget, you start seeing things disappear,” Aumente said. “Would we have the Pentagon Papers published? Would we have the kind of digging that resulted in [former President Richard] Nixon forced out of office? These are not sexy stories in the sense that a lot of people read or pay for them. The good press will say they have to do this, but the resources are not there.”
He said interesting new models are coming out of the Internet. ProPublica, an independent organization, is a place where investigative journalists can work on stories then partner with other news outlets to publish it.
“We’re moving toward a model of specialized public interest reporting not only supported by advertising and subscription, but also supported by foundations concerned about issues such as child health, the environment and an honest government,” Aumente said.
He used his experiences outside the U.S. as well as his own unique knowledge of new media trends to transform the communication and information schools at the University. Aumente helped design SCI at the University, one of the first interdisciplinary schools in the U.S.
“Universities are in the process of knocking down the silos. Back in 1981, we were all separated,” he said. “We created [SCI] and put all of the different subject areas into one tent. We knocked down the silos.”
Much of Aumente’s assignments are through different bureaus of the State Department and the American Embassies, who are in many cases staffed by people he has known in other countries. His work is supported by a combination of public and private contributions. In 1989, Aumente wrote a piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education about his work in Poland. Bill Moyers of PBS read the article and raised over $300,000 in grant money to develop Aumente’s programs in Europe.
Aumente is also founding director of the Journalism Resources Institute, where he currently serves as a senior fellow.
After all the experiences, awards and accomplishments, he said he still wishes to be a young journalist again.
“I’m really jealous. I’ve been watching this communication revolution unfold,” Aumente said. “In the short term, it looks terrible — it looks like a desert out there in terms of what’s happening, but it really is changing potentially for the better. If I were young again, starting out, I would be looking at the area of new media, Internet and what happens afterwards. To be part of that process, I think, is really fun.”
Professor recounts accomplishments
Published: Sunday, October 4, 2009
Updated: Sunday, October 4, 2009
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