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The 2023 Izzy Award Winners
The Park Center for Independent Media has announced that this year’s Izzy Award “for outstanding achievement in independent media” will be shared by nonprofit news outlets The Lever and Mississippi Free Press for exposing corruption and giving voice to marginalized communities; journalist Carlos Ballesteros for uncovering police misconduct and immigration injustice; and Liza Gross for exposing damaging manipulations by the oil-industrial complex.
The Izzy Award is named for I. F. “Izzy” Stone, the dissident journalist who launched I. F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 and questioned McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, racial injustice, and government deceit. Look out for an award ceremony to be held in late April 2023.
Read more about this year’s winners and past recipients of the award.
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The Lever
The Lever is a reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds accountable the people and corporations manipulating the levers of power. Its reporting, podcasts, videos, and live events focus on politics, business and corruption — and how money shapes and distorts economic and environmental policy.
A four-part series published last year by Andrew Perez followed the dark money behind the architect of the conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court, Leonard Leo. The judges commented: “No news outlet is as thorough and relentless as The Lever in exposing the corrupting influence of corporate power on government and both major parties.”
Read more about The Lever’s work here.
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Mississippi Free Press
Only three years after its launch, the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press has established itself as a formidable muckraking force whose reporting consistently exposes racial and economic inequities in the state of Mississippi.
Last year, the women-run outlet worked to expand public access to open records and obtained emails revealing how the University of Mississippi enables a network of wealthy alumni, even in the face of open expressions of racism.
The judges said of MFP, “Its fearless and empathetic reporting exposes racial and economic fault lines that go back centuries, vividly exposing how they shape politics and power in Mississippi in the 21st century.”
Read more on The Mississippi Free Press here.
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Carlos Ballesteros, Injustice Watch
Carlos Ballesteros’s investigation with Injustice Watch exposed how the Chicago Police department issued inordinate and arbitrary denials of U visas, a path to citizenship for undocumented victims of crime. The reporting led to plans by the U Visa task force of the National Immigrant Justice Center to appeal and refile some of the requests that were denied, and to an investigation by the Attorney General of Illinois into CPD’s repeated U visa denials.
“Ballesteros’s dogged reporting does exactly what investigative journalism in the spirit of I.F. Stone is supposed to do,” said the judges. “It uncovers systemic corruption and helps galvanize movement toward structural solutions.”
See Ballesteros’s reporting with Injustice Watch here.
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Liza Gross, Inside Climate News
Investigative reporting by Liza Gross of Inside Climate News revealed in rural Kern County, California, the heavy hand of the oil-industrial-complex on water quality and management. Gross reported how food safety boards — advised by a firm with ties to oil giants like Chevron — approved the use of oil wastewater for agricultural irrigation despite the impact of the toxic chemicals on water, crops, and soil.
“Gross’s work uncovered how oil companies divert millions of gallons of high-quality water in a drought-impacted state toward oil drilling projects,” according to the judges, “thereby bringing public attention to flagrant corporate malfeasance.”
Read more from Liza Gross and Inside Climate News here.
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| Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival |
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FLEFF’s Final Week: Catch Impactful Screenings and Book Launches
As the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) enters its final week on April 3, mark your calendar with remaining events and reflect on the burning issues raised by speakers so far.
Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman
Saturday, April 1, 3:00 p.m., FREE at Cinemapolis
Palast and his team investigates Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s plan to stop people of color from voting and documents his family’s connection to the state’s historical racism and slavery.
Stay for a talkback with filmmaker and investigative journalist Greg Palast in conversation with PCIM Director Raza Rumi.
Book Launch of “We Take Our Cities with Us”
Thursday, April 6, 7:30 p.m., on Zoom
After her Dutch mother’s death, Sorayya Khan confronts her grief by revisiting their relationship, her parents’ lives, and her own Pakistani-Dutch heritage in a multicultural memoir that unfolds over seven cities and three continents.
The Migrating Documentary Cinema of Yi Cui
Read FLEFF Director Patricia R. Zimmermann’s analysis of the work of Chinese filmmaker Yi Cui.
Cui’s films reference slow cinema, eschewing fast editing and action while emphasizing immersion in space and sound through multiple temporalities that can feel meditative.
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Extractive Industries are Appalachia’s Core Trauma
In the first week of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), three contributors to The Edge came together to engage urgent topics on Appalachia, the floods that ravaged it last year, and media involving the region.
Anna Creadick said of media coverage following the floods, “The language we use about natural disasters obscures the way that there are certain regions that are targeted in a way that is not natural at all.”
Matt Holtmeir followed by explaining how, contrary to mainstream depictions that portray the region as backwards, “Extractive industries are the core of trauma inside the region of Appalachia.” Further, said Chelsea Wessels, “The exploitation of the image of Appalachia — who these people are, what the land looks like, their history — all of this is defined by people who are outside.”
Read more from their discussion on The Edge.
And see Creadick’s reframing of the floods and an analysis of Appalachian environmental horror by Holtmeier and Wessels.
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In Other News
1. How many school shootings have there been this year after latest massacre in Nashville? | The Independent
2. How Germany Remembers the Holocaust | The Atlantic
3. The Historic Indictment Of Donald Trump | HuffPost
4. ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns | BBC
5. The $37m question: why do US states elect judges in expensive, partisan elections? | The Guardian
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