Sebastião Panzo
Editor, Agora
Luanda, Angola

The September 11 terrorist attacks shook up the sense of security in America and set a new scene in international relations (yet in construction) in a way none of us would have thought of.

Alfred Friendly wouldn't have conceived the attacks when he launched in 1983 the idea of on-the-job training program for print journalists from developing and transitional countries with an emerging free press assigned to American papers.

In the very same year, I was just a nine-year-old villager in Angola, Africa. Lost in the bush, all I had in mind was to hunt squirrels, gazelles, deer and so on; 11 years later, I became a journalist.

This year, at the age of 27, I found myself in America assigned to the Saint Paul Pioneer Press through the Alfred Friendly program.

Meanwhile I fitted perfectly in its goal: I am from a country where freedom of the press is constantly pressured. In Angola, a southern country in Africa, the government-controlled media dominates the scene.

The country's only news agency, Angop, and the only daily newspaper, Jornal de Angola, are state-owned and carry little criticism of the government. The constitution provides for freedom of expression but the government does not always respect this and the few independent media continue to be attacked, harassed and threatened.

Several independent newspapers and private radio stations strongly criticized the government for its denial to establish a new political peace agenda with the rebel movement, UNITA. The government says that the private media is irresponsible for asking that the government negotiate another peace-accord to end 40 years of civil war after the failure of four peace-talks in the country and stresses that by acting as such the media plays the rebel's game.

That's different from Alfred Friendly's country: In the U.S. stands the flag of the First Amendment, addressing the government to make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

That's the case of Minnesota—the 32nd state of the U.S., founded by the Sioux and the Chippewa tribes, designated as a territory in 1849, a land of legends such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles M. Shulz, Bob Dylan, the reporter Eric Sevareid, Hubert H. Humprey and Walter Mondale (both were USA vice-presidents), where Saint Paul Pioneer Press and Star Tribune battle for readership in the Twin Cities. These mainstream papers are driven by compelling stories in areas such as celebrity news and locally focused news. In June, July and August, for instance, Gary Condit and Chandra Levy made the front page, followed by Brian Herron story (a former Council Member who pleaded guilty in federal court to extorting money from a local business in exchange for keeping city inspectors at bay), and racial profiling.

Coming from a one-source-driven journalism, I was impressed with the way local professionals include several quotes no matter the length of the story. This allows the exploration of the human side of events. In short: the less present the writer, the more objective the story.

A journalism that has also to deal with theory than the viewers, listeners and readers are likely to be much less interested in the glut of reality events/shows. Meanwhile the September 11 attacks brought the dark side of the reality when suicidal hijackers slammed commercial planes in the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC killing thousands of people.

Amid the current media-wide reaffirmation of patriotism and unity, I witnessed the unprecedented coverage of the event with journalists devoting themselves to face the public demand and the eyes turned to Afghanistan—Land of the Afghan, a mountainous land-locked country in Central Asia with a history and culture that goes back over 5000 years—as the war against terrorism started hunting Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network.

If alive, Alfred Friendly, who won a Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for his coverage of the Middle East War of 1967, would be reporting or discussing the current concerns of the local media—With the tightness of national security what is left? What is allowed to the media that doesn't fall into classified information? What information is allowed by the government in the fighting against terrorism? And how free is the media to exercise the liberty expressed in the Constitution?

I'll follow closely the work of these professionals I came to know and work with in the next developments as every step against the wind is seen just as unpatriotic, just as in Angola, where every different steps are seen as a rebel-game. The First Amendment is at stake and the media has to find its way in it. How? The future will show.