The CUNY Baccalaureate Blog

Read about Mohamad Bazzi, Newsday Middle East bureau chief and current Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in this issue of The Hunter Word. Bazzi graduated from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program in 1997.

http://www.hunterword.com/articles/149

Hunter’s Mohammad Bazzi, Middle East Bureau Chief for Newsday, Speaks at the College

By Robert A Cruse on Jan 18, 2008

Mohamad Bazzi, the Newsday Middle East bureau chief and an alumnus of the CUNY BA program whose home campus was Hunter, was traveling by taxi on assignment from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad in 2003 during a period when Ali Babas were targeting foreign travelers for money and valuables.

Bazzi’s hired taxi driver told the journalist not to worry, that he had a live grenade that he carried in plain view to intimidate any Ali Babas – bandits – who stopped the taxi. Bazzi convinced the driver to put the grenade in the glove compartment. No bandits ever appeared, and driver and passenger arrived safely to their destination.

“This particular kind of situation never came up in Professor Morris’ classes; he might want to add it to the curriculum now,” Bazzii said in jest to an audience of Hunterites in the College’s Thomas Hunter Room 105 November 14. Bazzi’s “Professor Morris” was a reference to Assistant Professor Gregg Morris (sitting in the audience and taping the event), one of Bazzi’s former journalism instructors in the Department of Film and Media Studies.

Bazzi, who was on temporary leave from Newsday because he was appointed an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, recalled this anecdote as the final guest lecturer in the special speaker series organized by Undergraduate Student Government.

Bazzi, a 1997 CUNY BA graduate in urban studies, dressed in a brown blazer, blue dress shirt and khaki slacks, spent the most of his time answering questions from an audience of approximately 50 students and faculty and representatives from the President’s office. Questions ranged from Middle East politics to new forms of news media such as blogging.Bazzi was introduced by Morris who also recalled an anecdote about Bazzi interning at the Washington Post and being assigned a weather story. “Bazzi called the medical examiner’s office in Washington D.C. and asked, ‘What is this weather doing to people in Washington D.C.?’ The response was a lot of them are dying, particularly elderly people,” Morris said. The story made front page headlines and according to Morris, “blew the editors out of the water, this kid from CUNY, not from Harvard who didn’t have a car.”

At 27 years old, he had the distinct honor of being named the youngest ever bureau chief at Newsday daily newspaper. He was the United Nations bureau chief in 2002 and Middle East bureau chief in 2003. He held that position for the last four years, and was based in Beirut since 2005 up until three months ago. He returned to New York to accept the Edward R. Murrow fellowship award. He is presently based at NYU.

Bazzi said journalism muse told when he was in eighth grade working as a local reporter for community publications in Queens. He covered community events and school board meetings. In high school he eventually worked as a freelancer for Newsday, continuing to cover local events. When he was enrolled in Morris’ news writing classes, the instructor accepted his Newsday articles as assignments for the class.

Bazzi answered a question regarding his non-journalistic degree in urban studies. “Academically, I think a good social science background is a good preparation in general. I think foreign reporting takes an extra set of preparation and a lot of it you have to do on your own,” he said. As an example, he said about learning to cover urban news beats, he encouraged journalism students to reach out to retired officials or attend community board meeting to establish sources.

“I found some retired officers, some retired people, who really didn’t have that much to lose by talking to you and who usually wanted to talk. I thought that was a valuable experience and lesson from a metro framework. People in New York are usually easier to deal with,” he said. “In the Middle East you have to spend a lot of time with people drinking tea and talking to them. That never gets into your story.”

Responding to a student reporter’s question about the relevance of Independent media organizations,, Bazzi said, “Independent media provides a forum to do things and promote things like the Egyptian bloggers posting videos [on Egyptian police torture] on international levels,” he said. “It’s a very valuable function. But sometimes what happens in independent media is a lot of opinions that are not supported by reporting and by facts. It is fine to have opinions, and I think its good to be in those forums but it should be done journalistically and supported with facts and good arguments. There are a lot of bloggers who comment on Iraq who have never been there.”

Bazzi gave a sobering view when asked about his view of foreign news coverage in America, saying, “Its not going very well. It [is] just headed in this direction of less and less of it, really every month. Without more outlets, without more journalists on the ground doing those kind of stories, you’re going to find there is less potential for stories that kind of just challenge a conventional wisdom; especially a challenge [of] a government, any government, whether a Middle Eastern government or U.S. government, and the line they are trying to advance about what is going on.”

Commenting on the event, Fivel Rothberg, 29, who said he was a graduate student in the IMA MFA program of the Department of Film and Media Studies, said, “It was nice to hear another angle on the Middle East,” adding that he believed that there was a lack of variety of news stories about the war. Rothberg, carrying a bulging backpack, wearing faded jeans and a light jacket, indicated how difficult it was for him to keep up with events occurring in Manhattan. “It seems like in New York, there are a bajillion events going on all at the same time,” he said. Rothberg said he was the President of the IMA graduate student association, EYEspeak. He obtained his undergraduate degree at Temple University.

Alex Kohen, 20, a junior and double major in political science/urban studies and a vice-president of Hunter undergraduate student government, coordinated the “Hunter USG Presents…” speaker series. In a follow up interview December 3, in the USG office, he said he contacted Bazzi after Morris suggested that the CUNYBA-Hunterite might serve as an interesting speaker. “This was just something that I wanted to do; it was the first task I wanted to have this year,” Kohen said, referring to the speaker series.

Wearing in jeans and a blue hoodie, Kohen, who lives in the Hunter dorms, defended the relatively small turnout saying, said for future events he wanted to balance the line between political events and modern culture by inviting “younger faces” to the College, such as the creator of Facebook or perhaps hosting a Hip Hop speaker series.

“How is facebook a political tool?” Kohen says rhetorically. “Mos Def said a lot of his rhymes were taken from Shakespeare; so, now they’re using Mos Def to teach Hip Hop in some inner-city schools.”