Izzy Award Nominations and Spring Events

Izzy Award Nominations Deadline EXTENDED to Feb 9

The judges of the Izzy Award have extended the deadline for nominations until February 9 at midnight EST.

The award celebrates its 14th year in 2022, and PCIM will again grant this honor — named after legendary journalist I. F. “Izzy” Stone — for outstanding achievement in independent media.

Submissions are welcome for work produced in 2021 by independent media outlets or individual journalists or producers who publish their work through their own sites or those of independent outlets. Journalists, academics, and the public at large may offer nominations until the extended February 9 deadline.

Nominations should include 250 words or less explaining why the entry is worthy of consideration, and should include supporting web links (no more than four) and/or attached materials. Send submissions to Raza Rumi, director of PCIM, at pcim@ithaca.edu.

Read more about submitting nominations here.

Lawrence Bartley’s Story of Founding “News Inside”

Watch an excerpt of Lawrence Bartley at the 12th Izzy Award delivering his poignant account of providing reading materials to incarcerated people.

Bartley described his 27-year sentence in prison, during which he attended college courses, but had access to only sparse reading. “Incarcerated people are largely seen as invisible . . . I remember scrounging through old garbage cans to find something to write about,” looking for newspapers prison officers threw away.

After winning parole and partnering with The Marshall Project, his experience led to the creation of “News Inside,” a print publication that circulates to inmates.

Watch his full story here.

Explore Journalism and Environment: Spring Events Calendar

Join PCIM for a variety of events in the coming months featuring academics, journalists, and filmmakers in critical discussions spanning media and environment. The Park Center for Independent Media will co-sponsor several discussions with the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

This spring’s events include the 14th annual Izzy Award ceremony, which will recognize outstanding achievement in independent media from 2021. The ceremony will be in late April and feature speeches by the recipients.

Other events include the book launch for Devan Rosen’s “The Social Media Debate” and a conversation with Scott MacDonald and filmmaker Su Friedrich on her two film history projects. Two roundtables in April will interrogate the entanglement of climate, media, and science, with robust panels of academics and journalists.

Read more on our events and register to attend here.

Too Much TV News, Too Many War Hawks

Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR and founding director of PCIM, digs into the frustration and danger of media’s cyclical calls for U.S. wars:

“Democracies require vibrant debates, especially before wars are launched. There are virtually no dissenting views and no debates on U.S. television as the world is led again to war. This time over Ukraine.

Some of the same ‘experts’ now on TV were the ones who got it so wrong on Iraq nearly 20 years ago — ‘experts’ that hawkish MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell refers to as ‘the greatest foreign policy minds.’ I keep waiting to see a single expert who got Iraq right. (I was one of them. See ‘Cable News Confidential.’)”

Read his full commentary on The Edge.

The Filibuster Killed Another Voting Rights Push

Last week, after two days of debate in the Senate, Democrats’ push for voting rights was quashed, as Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin sided with the GOP to block a change to the filibuster, a tactic long used to undermine civil rights legislation. This amounts to the fifth instance of Senate Republicans blocking Democrats’ attempt to roll back GOP efforts to make it harder to vote.

This time, Republicans used the filibuster to shut down the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, two bills that aimed to curb gerrymandering and voter suppression across the U.S.

Read the full report on The Edge.

In Other News

1. US moves more troops to Europe as Russian lawmaker calls deployment ‘an absolutely destructive step’ (The Independent)

2. Hospitals Can’t Accept This as ‘Normal’ (The Atlantic)

3. Jeff Zucker Resigns From CNN Over Relationship With Colleague (HuffPost)

4. Climate change: EU moves to label nuclear and gas as sustainable despite internal row (BBC)

5. Trump considered blanket pardon for Capitol insurrectionists – report (The Guardian)