Committee to Protect Journalists Received 140 Times More Donations Than Usual After Meryl Streep's Golden Globes Speech
Donations are pouring in to the Committee to Protect Journalists after Meryl Streep urged viewers to support the non-profit at Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards.
Streep used her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement to denounce President-elect Donald Trump for mocking a disabled reporter in 2015. She went on to encourage the audience to support the press in holding Trump accountable "for every outrage":
That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in the 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 gonna need them going forward, and they'll need us to safeguard the truth.
The CPJ documents and researches cases in which journalists' press freedom is being violated and provides financial assistance to journalists in danger. It also works with heads of state and other diplomatic officials to seek justice for imprisoned or murdered journalists. The non-profit employs about 40 people around the world and raised nearly $1 million in 2016.
A typical Sunday evening brings in about five donations, said Courtney Radsch, the group's advocacy director. However, in the wake of Streep's comments, the non-profit received about 700 online donations on Sunday night, or 140 times the typical amount for that time.
The CPJ has yet to calculate the total amount raised since Streep's speech, but Radsch said most of the gifts were small. Streep's nod to the organization also brought increased traffic to the group's website and social media pages.
"A lot of people were hearing about us for the first time," Radsch said. "We just want to make sure they knew how to connect with us and understand what our mission is."
Disclosure: Time Inc., Money's parent company, has been a supporter of CPJ.