Former OSCE Media Representative receives Germany's Order of Merit

VIENNA, 13 January 2004 - The former OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Freimut Duve, today received the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany from President Johannes Rau.

The award honoured Duve's tireless efforts on behalf of journalistic freedom in the 55 OSCE participating States.

During his six years in office, Freimut Duve helped numerous journalists who faced difficulties over their critical reporting, and coined terms such as "structural censorship" and "censorship by killing". He publicly criticized deficits in freedom of the media not only in the new democracies east of Vienna, but also in the mature industrialized countries west of Vienna.

"Freimut Duve did pioneering work and became a fixed and respected figure within the OSCE structures," President Rau said. "As the first OSCE Media Representative, he gave the office structure and content and made it effective."

The many projects Duve's Office developed over the past years focused on media in multi-lingual societies in Eastern and Western Europe, freedom and responsibility and the Internet, and the responsibility of newspaper owners for the journalistic independence in their newspapers.

The "Defence of the Future" was the guiding idea of a peace project that Duve founded in the post-war regions of former Yugoslavia, and a media project roaming for two years the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the mobile.culture.container, provided young people from different groups with the possibility to meet and to develop new media.

Freimut Duve, was the first OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. He was appointed in 1998 and led the Office during the next six years. His mandate ended on 31 December 2003.