Michael Meyen is full professor of communication at the University of Munich. His research interests include media freedom, media systems, media discourses, the history of media and communication and the history of communication research. In the 1980s he worked as a journalist in the GDR and became a journalism student at the University of Leipzig, the country’s one and only training center for future party journalists. As a researcher, he analyzed both GDR media and the GDR’s representation in current media.