2012 Izzy Awards

Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College: The fourth annual Izzy Award was presented April 10, 2012, to independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous (Democracy Now correspondent, Nation Institute fellow) and to the Center for Media and Democracy, led by Lisa Graves. The award honored their work in 2011, during which Kouddous reported from Egypt on the Tahrir Square uprising and "unfinished revolution," and CMD exposed a secretive yet powerful corporate-front ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Previous Izzy Winner Amy Goodman took part in the ceremony, presenting the award to Sharif -- who flew to the event, with his father, from his current home in Cairo. Lisa was able to announce that major corporations had withdrawn from ALEC in the previous days (largely as a result of the controversy generated by CMD's "ALEC Exposed"). The ceremony took place in Ithaca College's Emerson Suites.