James Bittermann

Professor Bittermann is CNN's senior European correspondent based in Paris. Since joining CNN in 1996, he has covered the death of Princess Diana in 1997, NATO air strikes on Kosovo in 1998, the earthquake in Turkey in 1999 and the World Cup soccer championships, among other stories. He also frequently reports on the travels of Pope John Paul II. Bittermann joined CNN from ABC News, where he was a Paris news correspondent from 1990-1996. During his years with ABC, he covered a wide range of international events, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War and the Middle East peace process and U.S. deployment in Somalia. His long-form projects at ABC included Betrayed in Blood, a report on the French AIDS-tainted blood scandal for PrimeTime Live and two half-hour special reports for Nightline with Ted Koppel, A Perfect Messiah and The Fashion Conspiracy.

From 1978-1990, Bittermann was a European correspondent for NBC News. Based in Rome from 1978-1979, he covered two Papal transitions and the travels of Pope John Paul II. From 1980-1990, he was based in Paris. While there, he reported on many of the decade's major international stories in Eastern Europe, Northern and Western Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, Japan and the Soviet Union. He received a national news Emmy Award for his coverage of the 1988 Sudan famine. Prior to NBC, Bittermann was a Toronto-based correspondent and producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s newsmagazine. He also worked as a reporter for WKYC-TV in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1973-1975 after working one year for WQED-TV, a public television station in Pittsburgh.

In 1971-1972, Bittermann traveled the national presidential campaign staffs of Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana and Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine. He began his career in broadcast journalism in 1970 at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, after one year as a newspaper reporter with the Waukegan News-Sun in Waukegan, Ill. His many honors include a CableACE Award for CNN's coverage of the civil war in Zaire. He has been a panel moderator at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and a member of the jury for the French film competition Les Lumieres de Paris. Since 1998, Bittermann has been adjunct associate professor of communications at The American University of Paris, teaching courses in broadcast news and documentary film, among other subjects.