2:21 PM PST 1/9/2017
by
Gary Baum
The most explicit call to action in Meryl Streep’s memorable, now-viral speech about Hollywood, media and President-elect Donald J. Trump at the Golden Globes on Jan. 8 was her plea to join in support of The Committee to Protect Journalists.
The 35-year-old, New York-based nonprofit primarily defends reporters at risk of imprisonment or death for their work in repressive countries and conflict zones. But lately it’s raised concerns about press freedom in the United States.
The Hollywood Reporter talked to CPJ head Joel Simon the morning after Streep spoke.
Did you know Streep was going to mention the CPJ?
We had no idea.
What’s the response been so far?
Amazing – we got 500 new donations overnight and a couple hundred more during the day. They continue to come in and it’s mostly average people based on the size of the donation, so that’s really encouraging. Obviously, separately, it’s just enormous visibility and resonance about what’s at stake here. The thing about Meryl Streep is that we’re used to journalists championing this issue. She said the press needs to go out there and do what it needs to do and needs to be defended by all of us.
This was the first time most people had heard of the organization – it’s not a household name.
We’re primarily a front-line organization, protecting journalists who are doing this day-to-day work that’s incredibly dangerous and difficult. When we were founded, the U. S. media was really strong and there was a sense that we needed to look outward from our privilege and help others. And now that gap has narrowed and we are facing a press freedom challenge at home. While we of course recognize the challenges are different – it’s not Syria – the U. S. has been in a position of global leadership, the example we set for the press in this country has resonated all over the world, and so we expect to be very engaged during the Trump administration.
The CPJ harshly criticized the Obama administration over its own leak investigations and use of surveillance.
I think it’s laid a legal framework, and a kind of rationale, that’s very threatening in terms of what might come. When Trump tweeted out his displeasure that some of the information from the [Russian hacking] intelligence briefing leaked before he got it, that was a very menacing message. But that’s also a message the Obama administration sent pretty frequently in its own way. What’s fundamentally different is the overt hostility with Trump, the attacks on individual reporters, the threats to weaken libel laws. There’s a heightened rhetoric that is different.
How has the rise of social media weakened accountability reporting?
I think what keeps the press safe, what allows it to challenge powerful forces, is its utility. The press serves a vital role in terms of its ability to reach a mass audience with information that these powerful forces want to disseminate. But what’s happened is that technology has created a disintermediation, where if you’re ISIS you don’t need to talk to journalists, and you also can kill journalists. And if you’re a powerful politician, you previously needed to grapple with journalists, and now you can use your Twitter feed to do an end-run and disparage them and mock them. So essentially the media has less power.
What has the CPJ seen elsewhere that causes it to sound its alarm domestically now?
One of the things we’ve seen, without a direct analogy, is that if you look at the way autocratic leaders consolidate power, they challenge media as corrupt or that it doesn’t represent the views of the people. You see that rhetoric in Russia and Venezuela and Turkey. It’s not even ideological. If you can reduce the influence of the press, then if the public encounters reporting that might be threatening to you, and the general confidence in information is already low, it’s already much easier to dismiss it.
What’s the biggest open question of the Trump administration pertaining to the press?
Trump does not like to be criticized in the media. The media will criticize him and expose him in ways he doesn’t like. He’ll be angry, no question. Will it just be angry rants and tweets, or will it be translated into policies that are detrimental to how the media functions? We’ll see.
Will White House correspondents exist at the front lines of this dynamic?
The White House press corps has a role, but there was a time when it was more significant. The symbolism of the spokesperson for the administration submitting to harsh, hostile questions – difficult, probing questions from the media – is almost the most important thing itself. That’s a visible manifestation of that accountability role.
The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has taken on an outsized, polarizing cultural role in Washington in the past couple of decades. Reporters hobnob with officials and Obama roasted Trump, seated nearby, in 2011. Will the party change?
That event does the media no favors. I would not be sad to see its demise.
To learn more about supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, click here .

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The first casualty of the new government taking over Washington may be information about the government itself, ethics watchdogs say.
The new Republican-led Congress is moving toward confirming several nominees to run executive branch departments even though they have not yet had their financial disclosures vetted and cleared by ethics officials. The first act by the House of Representatives was a vote – later rescinded under fire – to dilute the power of an independent ethics office, notably its authority to share information about members with the public.
At the same time, President-elect Donald Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns. He’s asked for an investigation to find out how NBC News got intelligence information. And he has not yet said how or whether he’ll divorce himself from his business interests.
“There seems to be a new kind of culture coming in, different from what we’ve seen the past,” said Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington .
Republicans downplay the controversies as partisan whining. “Little procedural complaints,” was how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, described the complaints about the lack of information from Cabinet nominees.
To ethics watchdogs, the trend is clear and troublesome. Trump made draining the Washington swamp a major theme of his campaign, yet the public is probably more confused and skeptical than ever, independent groups maintained.
“It’s hard for the public to keep track of all that’s going on,” said Karen Hobert Flynn , president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan public interest group.
Wednesday, for instance, looms as overwhelming to constituents trying to make sense of the controversies. Trump plans his first news conference since his election, while at roughly the same time, five nominees are due for Senate confirmation hearings.
The turn-away from transparency began Jan. 2, the night before the new Congress was sworn in.
“Maybe they thought it was a federal holiday and no one was paying attention,” Flynn said.
Nearly half of the House’s Republicans voted in a private meeting to curb the influence of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. They wanted it under the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee , which would give House members more control over its proceedings.
Watchdog groups and social media exploded with outrage. “The American people will see this latest push to undermine congressional ethics enforcement as shady and corrupt,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch , a conservative research group. Trump in tweets questioned the timing of the initiative, and the GOP dropped the idea.
But other veils of secrecy remained.
The government’s ethics watchdog expressed “great concern” that a lack of information has left Trump administration nominees with “potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues” before their confirmation hearings.
On Friday, Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics , wrote Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that nominees must have their financial disclosure data certified by the office before hearings. Not all nominees have “completed the ethics review process,” he said. He did not name those nominees.
The Senate is to begin confirmation hearings Tuesday, and it hopes to have several nominees confirmed shortly after Trump takes office Jan. 20. Shaub did not say which nominees had not provided information.
The office has released material for some key nominees due for hearings this week, including Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., attorney general; Rex Tillerson, secretary of state; Gen. James Mattis, defense secretary; and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., Central Intelligence Agency.
To ethics experts, as well as Democrats, Shaub’s warning was another chapter in an ongoing, disturbing saga.
“I really am worried about where this administration is headed,” said Craig Holman , government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
Trump is setting a tone. He has never held a government office, and doesn’t feel “the norms of public service apply to him,” said Libowitz. Since Trump won the election, Libowitz added, many Republicans think the public is fine with skirting ethics norms.
GOP interests maintain that the controversy is manufactured by Democrats seeking a partisan advantage.
“Walter Shaub is an Obama appointee with a partisan agenda. His eruptions since Election Day show that beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said a statement by America Rising , a Republican research organization. Obama appointed Shaub as director in 2013. Shaub had worked for the agency during the George W. Bush administration.
“They want to put a bunch of political peeping Toms into the tax records of people,” Kellyanne Conway, Trump senior adviser, told “Fox & Friends” on Monday.
Judicial Watch’s Fitton was not overly concerned about the ethics delay. Confirmation hearings, he noted, are often quick and hardly go into much depth, and candidates are often not heavily scrutinized.
“Both parties do that,” he said.
Trump’s refusal to release his full tax returns was an issue throughout the presidential campaign. Presidential nominees for the past 40 years have routinely released their tax returns or summaries.
Trump said he wouldn’t release his until an Internal Revenue Service audit was completed, but nothing in IRS rules prevents him from doing so.
He also has not said how he will handle his business interests once he takes office, though he’s expected to discuss those matters Wednesday at a news conference. He is not barred by federal law from retaining those interests, though presidents historically have put their assets into blind trusts or turned over their businesses to others.
It all worries the ethics watchers.
“This is highly unusual,” said Holman of all the secrecy. “Republicans look at Trump and say, ‘If he can get away with it, so can we.’ ”

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Actress Meryl Streep stole the headlines with her acceptance speech at Sunday night’s Golden Globes in Los Angeles.
Streep, accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement, slammed President-elect Donald Trump — without mentioning him by name — for his apparent mocking of a disabled reporter during the campaign. (Trump has repeatedly said he was not mocking the reporter’s physical disability, including in a tweet on Monday morning .)
But tucked in her remarks was another comment that some have taken as a subtle jab. In defending “Hollywood” and the “foreigners” among the actors who were being honored, Streep said, “So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”
The line drew applause in the room. But UFC President Dana White took exception to the 67-year-old Streep’s comments.
“The last thing I expect is an uppity 80-year-old lady to be in our demographic and love mixed martial arts,” White told TMZ Sports .
White disputed the notion that his sport is not an art. Mixed martial arts combines different fighting disciplines, including boxing, jiu-jitsu and judo. UFC is the most popular mixed martial arts organization in the country.
“Of course, it’s an art,” he said. “These fighters, these men and women, are so talented. People who get into the UFC are the elite of the elite.”
The UFC is filled with fighters of many nationalities, including many Brazilians.
“We have fighters from all over the world,” White said. “… She’s not educated about the sport and it’s a completely uneducated comment.”
Scott Coker, the president of Bellator , another mixed martial arts organization, invited Streep to attend the company’s next event.
White spoke at the Republican National Convention last year. William Morris Endeavor Entertainment bought the UFC from White and his partners in July, and among the executives of WME is Ari Emanuel.
“Ari Emanuel is definitely Hollywood. He makes movies and TV shows and he wasn’t a Trump supporter either,” White said during his TMZ interview.

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David M. Perry is an associate professor of history at Dominican University in Illinois. He writes regularly at his blog: How Did We Get Into This Mess? Follow him on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN) After legendary actress Meryl Streep focused her criticism of Donald Trump on his mocking of Serge Kovaleski (a well-respected New York Times reporter who has a physical disability) — calling it the 2016 « performance » that broke her heart — an all-too-familiar debate followed.
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