Bittermann studied at Southern Illinois University where he graduated in Science in the year 1970. The University honored him with the Journalism Alumnus of the Year in 1989 and the Alumni Achievement Award in the year 2000. Bittermann married Patricia Thompson, who was an Emmy award winning television producer. She died in the year 2010.
Jim Bittermann began his career in Television Journalism in the year 1970, when he joined WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee. Prior to that, he did a brief stint as news reporter at the Waukegan News-Sun, Illinois. He was part of the national presidential campaign staff of Senators Birch Bayh of Indiana and Edmund Muskie of Maine in 1971-72. He later worked with WKYC-TV, WQED-TV and then as producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s newsmagazine. He shifted to NBC News in 1978 as European correspondent, when he covered the Papal transitions and also the tours of Pope John Paul II. He later joined ABC News in 1990 as their Paris correspondent, where he worked till 1996 covering major international stories like the dissolution of Soviet Union, the Gulf War, and the US deployment in Somalia. In 1996, he joined CNN as the European Correspondent based in Paris.
Bittermann has received many notable awards including an Emmy for his news coverage of the famine in Sudan in the year 1988. He was given the CableACE Award for his coverage of the Zaire civil war, when he worked at CNN. He was bestowed with the much acclaimed Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honor in appreciation of his work. He has been reporting news from France for nearly three decades. The award founded in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte is given for the outstanding accomplishments usually aimed at French nationals. Bittermann was the second person after Pierre Salinger in the field of American Journalism to receive that award.
In addition to his journalistic work, he has worked as moderator in the World Economic Forum held at Davos, Switzerland. He was also part of the jury in the French film competition Les Lumieres de Paris. He is also an adjunct professor at the American University in Paris teaching communication courses including documentary films and broadcast news.
