From 1978–1990, he was a European correspondent for NBC News. Based in Rome from 1978–1979, he covered two Papal transitions and the travels of Pope John Paul II. From 1980–1990, he was based in Paris. While there, he reported on many of the decade's major international stories in Eastern Europe, Northern and Western Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, Japan and the Soviet Union. He received a national news Emmy Award for his coverage of the 1988 Sudan famine.
He became Paris correspondent for ABC News from 1990 to 1996.[1] He has reported wars and revolutions in the Mideast, Africa and eastern Europe as well as such stories as the Soccer World Cup, the travels of Pope John Paul II, and Princess Diana's death in 1997. In 2015, he covered the devastating terrorist attacks in Paris for which he and the CNN team shared in the Royal Television Society Breaking News Award in 2016 [2][3]
Since 1998, Bittermann has been an assistant adjunct professor of communications at The American University of Paris.[4] 2015 marked his 50th year in journalism.
Bittermann's wife, Emmy-winning television producer Patricia Thompson, died in 2010.[5] The couple's one daughter, Dr. Tess Bittermann, is a gastroenterologist at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.
In April, 2017, Bittermann married Mary Jean Lowe, a counselor at the American School of Paris.
Bittermann serves on the board of governors of the American Hospital of Paris and the board of trustees of the Centre des Etudes des Communications Internationales.
