We are used to actors complaining about the press. So Meryl Streep’s praise for newspapers during her “emotional and searing speech at the Golden Globes” was something of a landmark moment.
We need a principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution.
So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood foreign press, and all of us in our community, to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we’re going to need them going forward, and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.
Her statement is the direct result of Donald Trump’s active hostility towards the media during his campaign for the US presidency.
Streep also referred to Trump’s controversial mocking of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. “The person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter”, she said. “Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back.”
She argued that Trump’s actions had legitimised bullying: “This instinct to humiliate... by someone powerful, it filters down into everyone’s life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect, violence invites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.”
What can one say but good for you, Meryl. Unless, of course, you’re Donald Trump. He dismissed Streep as “a Hillary lover” and was unsurprised at coming under attack from “liberal movie people.”
He flatly denied having poked fun at Kovaleski. He told the NY Times: “People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter’s disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing.”
Reading Trump’s mind? That would be a feat, would it not?
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