Cosper plants seeds for a free press in Romania

Doug Cosper visits a tunnel in Sarajevo through which as many as 4,000 Bosnian Muslim soldiers and civilians passed during the Bosnian War, the only way in or out of the city at that time. He took the tour after traveling from Romania, where he was teaching at the University of Bucharest, to conduct a journalism workshop.

Doug Cosper has taught reporting and editing classes at the School off and on since 1986. In June, he returned from nine months in Romania, where he had been the lead trainer for third-year students in a skills-based journalism program at the University of Bucharest as part of a Knight International Press Scholarship. Through August 2004, he will be lead trainer in a program for Southeast Asian professional journalists in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the New York-based Independent Journalism Foundation.

By Doug Cosper

The mayor of Bucharest Precinct 6 slammed the gavel, and an obedient hush fell over the meeting room.

"Are there any journalists present?" he asked.

Twelve hands waved meekly from the back row, where the University of Bucharest journalism students were told they must sit.

Councilmen and women peered at the students. Many later told us they had never known a journalist to attend these public meetings.

		Amid Coca-Cola ads and U.S. flag T-shirts, American exchange student finds culture While in Romania, Doug Cosper instigated a summer student exchange program. Irina Florea, a member of The Bullet staff at the University of Bucharest, visited Boulder in April. Aaron Rowlands, a Campus Press staffer, spent two weeks in Romania in May, during which time he helped put out an edition of The Bullet, visited several professional media outlets in Bucharest and visited historical and cultural sites. His ticket was donated by Bill Madonna ('73). Here are some of Rowlands' first impressions of the country, which were published in The Bullet. By Aaron Rowlands During my one week in Romania, I have been bombarded with "American Life." For clarification, the hit song by Madonna seems to monopolize radio and television airwaves far more than it does back in the United States. In addition to this piece of imported American commercial culture, I have seen Coca-Cola ads dotting the Romanian countryside and even several locals sporting American flags on T-shirts and shopping bags. So has my first foray off the North American continent been simply a witnessing of the exportation of America? Hardly. The American commercialism that flowers throughout Romania has not uprooted the distinctness of culture here. Just five minutes of observation drives this point home. The apparent free-for-all on the roads in Bucharest, the wandering stray dogs, the beautiful buildings and streets obtrusively interrupted by blocks of flats, and other buildings abandoned in midstages of construction over 13 years ago remind me as an American visitor how far I am from home. Several times since I've been here, people have shown concern over whether I find the city dirty. While Bucharest may not be as new, clean or organized as many cities in America, including my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, I find the culture here much more real and compelling. The long, complicated history is something not revealed in America the way it is here. Much of America looks and feels the same, but in Romania I have seen 800-year-old ruins, magnificent city squares and shepherds with their flocks blocking roads in the countryside. Such cultural experiences signify how the American culture I am used to is far from being universal. My interaction with the people here has indicated how they are different from Americans by how they've adapted to circumstances. I realized the hard way how unadapted I am when language confusion caused me to miss my bus stop, leap out of a moving bus and hit my head on a car bumper. Life here is much faster-paced, and the city streets resemble a chaotic jungle compared to those I regularly navigate unharmed back home. In sharp contrast to the atmosphere in the city, I found the countryside on the road to Sighisoara much more serene and laid back than the landscape of America. I was amazed by all the people sitting outside just talking by the side of the road. In America, people relax in the confines of their houses and generally go outside when there are tasks to be accomplished, not just to casually talk to others. I know my experience here will make me appreciate the things I am missing from America, from good rock music and baseball on TV to what I now consider clean, safe cities. When I get back home, I'll miss being among those who lived the history of Romania, those who remember living through communism and the revolution. It's hard to find someone my age in the United States who can tell me much about the Reagan years in the 1980s, and even if they could, it would not be the most fascinating recollection. I will also really miss the social atmosphere in Bucharest and other towns. People spending time outside just enjoying a drink or absorbing the culture around them. Bucharest and Romania feel much more alive and dynamic than the well-structured, ordered American life.

CU journalism students no doubt remember those long, hellish nights covering the Boulder City Council in Reporting 1. As a recent Knight International Press Fellow teaching in Romania, I got a hard reminder of why that oft-times tedious exercise is so important to safeguarding democracy.

On my arrival in Romania in October 2002, the students let me know early on that they considered American journalism the epitome of the craft. Although I happened to agree, that left much for me, as an ambassador of that craft, to live up to. As we covered the basics in class, I discovered a fresh appreciation of the journalistic ground rules that CU instructors repeat like mantras, semester after semester after semester.

"Accuracy first. Attribute your facts. Stay out of your story. Let your readers decide who's right. Balance your stories. Be fair."

Until the fall of the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, Romanian readers were not in the business of thinking for themselves. Thirteen years later, most readers, including many young ones, still expect reporters to tell them what's happening and how they should feel about it. When my students began attributing what they wrote in their student newspaper, their colleagues complained, "I don't like all this 'he said' and 'she said' stuff; just tell us what you think about it."

The importance of the media's role in cultivating democracy got a little clearer to all of us during my stay. But it came into sharpest focus when we tried to cover that Bucharest City Council meeting.

Putting together advance stories on the meeting, the students called city hall. The public relations official on the other end of the line sounded taken aback. "No, the mayor isn't available to talk about the agenda. No, nobody from the PR office can talk, either. And besides, no one knows what is going to happen at the meeting until about an hour before it starts."

That last statement was a lie. So what? No one is watching. The students said they had never seen an advance story on a public meeting in Romania. That explained why only politicians were there on the night of the meeting. Not one citizen. Not one. We couldn't be sure, but we think those politicians raised taxes that night. Possibly no one will ever be sure. The consensus in Romania is that the people either don't care or don't think they can make a difference. But you can't care about what you don't know about. The students returned to class outraged, and teaching the coverage of public meetings in Bucharest and Boulder took on a new urgency. So did teaching the link between journalism and democracy.

We try to remind students of their hard-won, solemn duty to inform the electorate and safeguard democracy from those who would abuse power.

But I didn't truly understand what U.S. journalism and democracy represent to so many people in so many places until I visited a Romanian town about twice the size of Boulder named Bacau to consult with the management and staff of the daily newspaper Ziarul de Bacau.

It seemed a pretty presumptuous exercise to begin with. The paper's three editors were already heroes in my eyes. They provided the only nominally independent voice in a town in which the mayor, a former auto mechanic with a forged college diploma, owned the television and radio stations, all other daily newspapers and the kiosks from which all newspapers were sold. (His mother, a former ticket taker with the public bus system, now owned the newly privatized transportation system. His brother got most public construction contracts.) This spunky, courageous trio and their staff put themselves in harm's way every day in the name of the people's right to know, and I was supposed to teach them something about journalism?

Well, we were having dinner at a local restaurant owned, incidentally, by one of the mayor's chief supporters, when the subject of "Where were you during 9/11?" came up.

A common thread emerged as the string of stories unfolded around the table. All four of the Romanians, including a colleague from the journalism center in Bucharest, spoke of despair, of a sinking loss of hope. They said they felt that the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, was an attack on their hope for democracy. All four said they cried when they heard the news.

Those four Romanians look to the U.S. model, imperfect as it may be, for their hope for democracy. And they look to the United States for their model of independent media whose primary function is to build and sustain democracy.

I since have heard similar stories from colleagues training journalists in emerging democracies across the globe. With so many in the world looking to us as the best example of democracy – and journalism – done right, we journalists and journalism educators have much to live up to.

To read the Romanian students' newspaper, The Bullet ("Shooting Down the News for Students") go to www.cji-bullet.ro.

cosper@indra.com