The first time that I visited this campus was in 1994. I was with a group of fellows from Africa participating in an intensive workshop in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts for 15 days. It was a great chance to learn about the latest trends in American journalism and about Africa itself. I got impressed with the megamediums getting to the scene before the police or recording an event for history. But more than that, accountability and fairness, within the framework of the law, impressed me the most. I learned that any country should talk its problems through its media especially those like the African ones who still lack an equitable and good representation. Obviously there’s particularities from one culture to another. Africans don’t like to have their lives exposed to the media. In the past February a reporter asked Mr. Nelson Mandela whether he was going to spend Valentine’s Day with his fiancee, who’s Mozambican and lives in Mozambique. Mandela replied, In my culture, I don’t discuss these kinds of issues in public, especially with someone young enough to be my grandson. The reporter was white, Portuguese, and young. I’ve learned to go beyond the so-called cultural taboos and denounce and prevent attempts to keep Africa going backwards. When I started my career back in 1986 I was told that I’m the institution, the government, and the like. Things changed in 1992 when the country was democratized. Somehow our most recent journalism, in Mozambique, is following the paths of the American First Amendment:Coming out in a time of rebellion and aimed primarily to be society’s watchdog.

Journalism, Fellowship Hubbert Humphry