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| SEEMO Board (Photo mady in Tirana in November 2009) |
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SEEMO is glad to announce that during the SEEMO Board Meeting Boris Bergant, former European Broadcasting Union (EBU) President and former Deputy Director of RTV Slovenia, was elected as the new President of the SEEMO Board. Zrinka Vrabec Mojzes was appointed as Deputy President, Radomir Licina, former Board President, will be a Board Member with special responsibility for all SEEMO publications; Pavol Mudry will be in charge of the organisation and funding; Agron Bajrami will be in charge of monitoring activities; Milena Dimitrova will be in charge of press freedom and ethics; and Marta Palics will be responsible for regional cooperation.
During the board meeting, Milena Dimitrova from Bulgaria acquired, according to the results of the SEEMO election in 2006, the function of SEEMO Board Member, instead of Jorgos Papadakis from Greece. The SEEMO Board and SEEMO Secretary-General Oliver Vujovic would like to thank Papadakis for his contribution and all his efforts in recent years as a member of the SEEMO Board. The SEEMO Board and the SEEMO Secretary-General also express a special thank you to Radomir Licina, who was SEEMO Board President from 2002 to 2009, and who did a great job of representing SEEMO over all of the past years.
Another outcome of the SEEMO Board Meeting was a call for regular elections in all SEEMO countries for new Coordinators / Chiefs of the Offices. The elections should take place within six months following the SEEMO Board Meeting. The election will be coordinated by the SEEMO Secretariat in Vienna in cooperation with all SEEMO members in the region.
During its board meeting the SEEMO Board offered special support to Fariba Pajooh, a young Iranian blogger and journalist. On 22 August 2009, Pajooh was arrested at her parents' house in Teheran. SEEMO supports the liberation of Pajooh and hopes that the authorities in Teheran will free her as a positive signal.
SEEMO is proud to announce the continuation of cooperation with the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) until 2012. As a first activity under the new contract, SEEMO is organising the conference Women, Men and Media in Sarajevo from 13-16 December 2009. The next conference, as part of this cooperation, will be the South East Europe Investigative Journalism Forum, a regional meeting of investigative journalists in Montenegro, in May 2010.
SEEMO would hereby like to use this opportunity to also announce its press freedom mission to Serbia. This SEEMO-IPI mission, led by SEEMO Secretary-General Oliver Vujovic and organised in cooperation with the OSCE, will take place from 1 - 3 December 2009. During the visit to Serbia, the mission members will meet different media and political representatives.
SEEMO is also continuing its publishing activities. The new, 2009 edition of the SEEMO South East and Central Europe Media Handbook will be published by the end of November 2009, with the support of regular SEEMO partners: the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Central European Initiative (CEI) and Erste Foundation. After publishing the book, the SEEMO staff will immediately start with the preparation for the 2010 issue. Additionally, a new edition of SEEMO's quarterly De Scripto magazine was published. This number was in cooperation between the University of Vienna and the University of Athens. The next issue of De Scripto magazine will be focused on public broadcasting and will be published by the end of 2009.
Finally, SEEMO is glad to note that on 4 - 5 November 2009 the third South East Europe Media Forum (SEEMF) was successfully held in Tirana, Albania. The topic of this year's SEEMF, which was opened by Albanian President Bamir Topi, was Media, Marketing, Business and New Media. The third SEEMF registered a record number of more than 350 participants from the entire South East and Central European region and was organised in traditional partnership between SEEMO, WAZ Medien Gruppe, and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS). Local partners included Albania Tring Digital, Tring Communications, the Albanian Media Institute and Vizion +. SEEMO is preparing with its partner the fourth SEEMF which should take place in the second half of 2010. |
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