Journalism prof promotes free press in war-torn Croatia

book cover "The breakup of the nation of Yugoslavia ignited the bloodiest European conflict since World War II...In Croatia and Bosnia, by December 1995, more than 250,000 people had become casualties of the war in the Balkans (a term used to describe the area of Europe that includes the former Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania)."
-- Bosnia: The Struggle for Peace, by Sherry Ricchiardi

Is this a life?
Is this a kind of life?
There's no sun nor freedom for us.
Is the blue sea really blue?
The Adriatics are now BLACK.
Are the green fields really green?
In Sisak, the oil fields are burning.
Yes, and this is life as well.
Mother, Father, Sister and myself
loving and longing for peace and freedom.
-- Nika, age 10

By Susan Voelkel

"Indiana University is 100 percent supportive of efforts to promote a free press in other parts of the world that have been oppressed," says IU Professor Sherry Ricchiardi. And when the going gets dangerous, colleagues often offer encouragement.

Sherry Ricchiardi Ricchiardi knows whereof she speaks when she talks about danger. She has traveled extensively in Serbia and Bosnia reporting on wars and oppression, and helping journalists there build a free press. She shares with them her own experiences as a reporter which have included finding herself in the midst of the lift-threatening conflicts.

The journalist, who is an IUPUI faculty member and director of the Indiana University-Zagreb University Media Resource Center, spent most of October in the former Yugoslavia conducting media training at newspapers in several cities. The center which she directs is an International Media Fund program that promotes the free press in Croatia.

Her reports on that war-torn area have appeared in media throughout the United States. The September issues of Quill magazine and the American Journalism Review each had articles by her, both dealing with aspects of reporting the strife in the Balkans.

Ricchiardi has also written a book, Bosnia: The Struggle for Peace, which gives readers a wonderfully clear, brief history of the complicated tribal conflicts which are raging in the former Yugoslavia. She verifies the human tragedy with inserts about such things as the effect of the warring on children (including a poem by a 10-year-old Croatian at left).

If the whole bloody mess in the area which was once Yugoslavia seems repugnant, confusing and unfathomable, Ricchiardi's book is a good place to start to untangle the strings and get the background needed to follow the ongoing events.

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