Resembling I.F. Stone

This is adapted from
comments made at Tuesday's inaugural
ceremony of the Izzy Awards for independent media
- named after legendary journalist I.F.
"Izzy" Stone. Blogger Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman of Democracy
Now! shared the award presented by Ithaca College's
Park Center for Independent Media.

When I first heard about an
award for people who most "resembled" Izzy, I had high hopes that
I might finally win a prize. Unfortunately, the selection committee
appears to have been concerned with behavior.

Resembling Izzy in behavioral
terms does not lead to an easy life. His capacity for thinking independently,
and acting on principle, isolated him from just about everyone.

In the McCarthy era, because
he spoke in defense of Jeffersonian principles, people were afraid to
be seen with him. When he supported the rights of Palestinians, Jewish
institutions would not invite him to speak. And when the National Press
Club refused to serve his black guest lunch, he quit the club, isolating
himself from his colleagues.

He said he was so happy in
his work that he should be "arrested." But the consequence, for
him, of speaking truth to power was loneliness.

Inevitably, the reward of such
a man comes late. I.F. Stone knew this. He said: "I began as
a pariah and then was treated as a gadfly. If I live long enough, I
will become an institution." And indeed in his lifetime, he moved
on to become an icon.

Last year, Harvard's Nieman
Foundation for Journalism began awarding an annual I.F Stone Medal for
Journalistic Independence with a follow-on panel on strengthening this
independence. So two decades after his death, he became a fulcrum for
journalistic independence.

Now, following the I.F. Stone
Medal of 2008, comes the Izzy Award of 2009 with different criteria
but a common goal. Rest assured that I.F. Stone is rotating in his grave
with pleasure over these annual awards.

Today's Izzy Award winners
do have points of resemblance to I.F. Stone. Glenn Greenwald is a close
reader of official documents and a principled critic of the tendency
of the Executive Branch to exceed its rightful powers. He has been a
fearless critic of government officials and complacent reporters. He
has shown a willingness to challenge conventional pieties, including
unthinking support for Israeli hardliners.

Amy Goodman career also has
similarities. She speaks up for the disenfranchised and gives her audience
facts they don't hear from the traditional media. She is an investigative
journalist and writes often about human rights. Like I. F. Stone and
his weekly, she founded a vehicle, "Democracy Now!", that takes
no advertising or money from corporations or government. She confronts
authority no matter how high. And she has repeatedly shown physical
courage, something that I.F. Stone showed in accompanying Jewish refugees
of World War II in their illegal and dangerous travel from Europe to
Palestine.

I.F. Stone once said: "If
the Government makes a mistake, the newspapers will find out and the
problem may then be fixed. But if freedom of the press were lost, the
country would soon go to pieces."

What will this crucial freedom
of the press amount to in coming years in the face of so much technological
change? And how to protect it? The Park Center for Independent Media's
answer is to indentify role models by giving them Izzy Awards. It has
made a good beginning.

In conclusion, I.F. Stone once
said that he resembled nothing more than a "great Jewish bullfrog."
With this in mind, I congratulate the awardees on two grounds: their
prize-winning resemblance to I.F. Stone in behavioral terms and their
abysmal failure to resemble him in person.