Berger is well recognised as a high-value participant and respondent, having been invited to take part in more than 300 events over the years, many of these engagements as a keynote speaker.
More formally, at UNESCO, as an international civil servant, Berger has not eligible for personal recognition – with an exception made for receiving the Allan Kirkland Soga Lifetime Achievement Award (Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards, South Africa).
Previously, he was an active member of the SA National Editors Forum (SANEF) since its inception in 1996, and was elected to the council of the body up to 2011. In 2002, he was elected as deputy chairperson, and was re-elected in 2003. In 2006, he won the Nat Nakasa Award for integrity and courage in journalism, from SANEF, Print Media South Africa (PMSA) and the Nieman Foundation.
The South African parliament appointed Berger to the board of the Media Development and Diversity Agency in 2007.
He served as Chair of the board of David Rabkin Project for Experiential Journalism Training, publishers of Grocott’s Mail through 2003 to 2010.
In 2002, he was made a Fellow of Print Media South Africa for service to the newspaper industry. He has also served as an invited judge in several journalism competitions.
Berger is winner of two Fulbright awards: African Research Fellowship (2000) Fulbright Alumnus Award (2002). He has been a visiting scholar at universities in Australia and the USA.
From 1998 – 2000, he was invited to serve as a director on the board of the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa, a section-21 company set up by the South African government’s Department of Communications to address training backlogs in broadcast and new media.
From 1994-1997, he was a trustee of the Eastern Cape News Agency.
He was appointed as a member of the global Board of Open Society Institute Media Program in 2010, and 1995 he served as a member of the Radio Advisory Board of the Open Society Foundation in South Africa. He has been solicited and been active on the boards of five journalism and media journals, and is often asked to provide peer or other reviews of literature and job candidacies.