Greeting of Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert

Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert

The CIVIS Media Prize is in the best tradition of the European Enlightenment. It recognizes outstanding programmes and contributions on radio and television which make an important contribution to social integration and cultural diversity in Europe with journalism which is both critical and committed to reality: open, in the European spirit and without denying conflicts. For more than two decades, the CIVIS Media Prize has been promoting understanding and communication between people of different cultures and religious communities in Europe through those media which today most strongly create the image of European society: radio and television.

"The currency of democracy is information", is how Thomas Jefferson once aptly described the great importance and the responsibility of the media for the liberal development of an informed opinion. Even if he said it long before the TV age and before the creation of the European Union - this sentence continues to be valid. That is why it is so important to recognize outstanding journalistic achievements from all over Europe and to provide impulses for a quality journalism of a European format - for a Europe which is growing together. A Europe which is as conscious of the obligations of its common religious and intellectual foundations, as it is of the inestimable value of its cultural diversity.

I am particularly delighted that the presentation of prizes is taking place in a building of the German Bundestag - a house which is named after Paul Löbe, who was not only German Reichstag President and President by right of age of the German Bundestag, but also a journalist and a passionate European. I would like to sincerely thank the jury for their selection and congratulate all prize-winners at this year's CIVIS Media Prize on their awards!

Patron Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert
President of the German Bundestag