[hr-media] Former OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media 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 censorshipand 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 Futurewas 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.


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