[WATCH] Meryl Streep pays tribute to Daphne Caruana Galizia at press freedom speech

Meryl Streep paid tribute Daphne Caruana Galizia, along with other journalists around the world during her speech at the International Press Freedom Awards.

“I’d like to pay tribute to the journalists who paid the hardest price for their questions this year: Daphne Caruana Galizia, Kim Wall, Tatyana Felgengauer... I salute you, and your equally brave male colleagues, and thank you all,” she said.

The CPJ International Press Freedom Awards honours journalists or their publications around the world who show courage in defending press freedom, despite facing attacks, threats and imprisonments.

During her speech, Streep, who plays Katharine Graham in the filmThe Post - the first female publisher of The Washington Post, honoured and thanked all journalists, and noted the role of female journalists and free press.

“I feel very privileged to be here on a night when we honour some of the bravest journalists in the world, and this terrific, hardworking organization whose mission it is to safeguard them and their work,” she said.

“Everybody knows that journalists are rushed toward the danger, rushed toward the trouble, not away from it,” she went on to say.

“Physical courage and stamina of journalists is something really important and is a basic structure and underpinning of our democracy, but even greater than the physical courage is the mental and intellectual courage to defy a president, to stand up for what’s right, to defy any kind of prior restraint or cease-and-desist orders”

Back in November, the CPJ committee had joined other international press freedom groups to condemn the murder of Caruana Galizia, and joined the vigil calling for justice her murder.

"Daphne Caruana Galizia embodied the courage and commitment of independent journalists everywhere to bring us the news and illuminate inconvenient truths at great risk,” they had said.

“Her cowardly murder must not go unpunished," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said in the joint statement.”

During her speech, Streep went on to mention the movie she recently starred in ‘The Post’, with a timely message about the power of women in leadership roles and the importance of press freedom were among the reasons it was honoured.

Streep went on to thank all journalists for their hard work and dedication. "Thank you, you intrepid, underpaid, overextended, trolled and un-extolled, young and old, battered and bold, bought and sold, hyper alert, crack caffeine fiends."

"You gorgeous, ambitious, contrarian, fiery, dogged and determined bullshit detectives. You persevering, cool, objective, indefatigable, chronically fatigued, pharmaceutically soothed, chocolate-comforted twitter clickers! You, the Enemy of the People. (Yeah, but just the Bad People!) May I, on behalf of a grateful nation, thank you!"

Patricia Mayorga won the 2017 International Press Freedom Award.

In March 2017, another Mexican journalist, Miroslava Breach Velducea, was shot eight times and died on the way to the hospital. Breach covered politics and crime, among other subjects in Chihuahua. Mayorga had received threatening messages and said she feared for her life after Breach's murder.