FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (9/97)
Contact: Lynn Stewart, Centenary News Service
318-869-5120 or 869-5709
SHREVEPORT, LA -- "Freedom of / from the Press" will be the topic at 11:10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 2 when Centenary College offers a public convocation with Dr. Frank-Dieter Freiling, a German Marshall Fund Fellow on campus this week.
The topic comes in the wake of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the program will include a discussion of the role of an agressive press and the bounds of the public's right to know versus an individual's right to privacy.
Dr. Freiling, 35, who will direct Europe's largest television station upon his return to Germany, will speak briefly and then participate in a conversation with the audience.
The program is free and open to the public as a service of Centenary's Convocations Committee. It will be held in Kilpatrick Auditorium, located in the Smith Building at the corner of Kings Highway and Woodlawn Street.
Dr. Freiling is an attorney, legal scholar, author, and publisher from Hamburg, Germany. From 1993-95 he was assistant to the chairman and chief executive officer of Gruner + Jahr AG, Germany's largest media publishing company. Currently he completing a term as publisher of GALA, a national weekly magazine focusing on people, similar in conception to the British magazine Hello! or Vanity Fair and the American magazines People and Vanity Fair.
Following studies in law and history in Germany and a fellowship at the University College of Wales, Dr. Freiling received an honors degree in law from the University of Frankfurt in 1989. He then continued his studies at the United Nations in New York as a Fellow of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation, taking a doctorate in international law with a specialization in foreign development aid.
Dr. Freiling has served as assistant judge and assistant district attorney in the Frankfurt courts, has represented the state of Thuringia to the German federal government, and has served as a member of the legal division of the Federal Republic of Germany's permanent mission to the United Nations.
Dr. Freiling also has extensive experience in various communications media. In the mid-80s, he served as academic intern for a German national television station. From 1987-94 he wrote editorials focusing on foreign trade and international development aid issues for the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung.
He has been a regular contributor as well to several national newspapers and magazines (including FAZ Magazin (a Sunday supplement), Manner Vogue (the German equivalent of GQ) and Welt am Sonntag (a national Sunday paper). He has also written on acting, actors and U.S. films. He is the author of several books, including Germany and the United Nations.
Since his student days, Dr. Freiling has had an abiding interest in journalistic education and international exchange. He was the founder and president (and he continues as chair of the advisory board) of IJP -Initiative Jugendpresse, a national organization journalists dedicated to furthering the education and international experience of younger German journalists. He also founded and chaired a series of week-long international political conferences for journalists from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. He coordinates the Arthur F. Burns Fellowships, the largest journalist exchange program between Germany and the U.S.
Dr. Freiling will be speaking to classes and other groups from Monday, Sept. 29 until Thursday, Oct. 2. His topics will include "Journalism in Germany and the U.S.," "German Unification in Year 8," "Transatlantic/International Youth and Student Exchange," "The Roles of International Organizations in Transatlantic Relations," "U.S. Politics Seen from the German Perspective."
The German Marshall Fund was established as an independent agency by the German government in 1972 in gratitude to the United States for the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Germany after World War II. Its provisions make possible the visits of distinguished Europeans as lecturers on the campuses of American liberal arts colleges. The program is administered by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
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