Marius Dragomir Has Received the 2025 Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award 

On 22 September 2025, during the 7th Congress of the Polish Communication Association in Katowice, Poland, our director, Marius Dragomir, received the 2025 Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award for an outstanding publication in the field of media studies. 

The award, established in 2018, is conferred annually for exceptional scholarly contributions in the areas of democracy, human rights, media ethics, media policy, and public service media. Dragomir was recognized for the Media Capture Monitoring Report, co-authored with Zsuzsa Detreköi, a research project of the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC) and the International Press Institute (IPI). 

The Selection Committee praised the work, noting that the prize was awarded “for the originality and thoroughness of his research, offering a systematic and pioneering perspective on media ownership, regulatory frameworks, and the complex relationship between media and politics.” 

The Media Capture Monitoring Report is an annual study that evaluates the level of media capture in EU Member States and the extent to which they comply with new EU regulatory standards designed to combat the phenomenon. In its inaugural year, the report covered seven pilot countries: Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Slovakia. As of 2025, the project included Spain as well. 

Past recipients of the Karol Jakubowicz Award include Ewa Nowak-Teter (2024), Slavko Splichal (2023), Urszula Doliwa (2022), Karen Donders (2021), Agnieszka Walecka-Rynduch (2020), Małgorzata Adamik-Szysiak and Maria Łoszewska-Ołowska (2019), as well as Maria Nowina Konopka, Jakub Nowak, and Christian S. Nissen (2018). 

Photo credit: prof. Monika Kaczmarek-Śliwińska