The group, which was recently sued for allegedly blocking qualified journalists who run for members, reportedly paid substantial sums to members to serve as officers and on committees.
A week before the 78th annual Golden Globe Awards, the organization behind the ceremony is recovering from a hard-hitting exhibition at the Los Angeles Times.
There are no black journalists among the 87 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, according to the Times, and the organization – whose ethics have long been questioned, dating back to an FCC investigation that led to the 1968-74 broadcast ban and the Pia Zadora scandal in 1982 – continues to allow its members to behave in ways that question their ethics and integrity.
HFPA is not just allowing its members to receive generous perks from the studios and networks whose projects they later write and vote for, like a trip to France that may help explain the recent Golden Globe nominations for the criticized TV series Emily in Paris. , among other skyscrapers. But the organization, which is ostensibly a nonprofit organization, is also paying its own members – many of whom are struggling journalists – substantial amounts of money to serve as officers and on various committees.
Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa filed an antitrust suit against HFPA last year, claiming that the organization was depriving it of potential income by preventing it and other qualified journalists from becoming members in order to protect the sale value of the report of current members in various international territories. (All HFPA members must be based in Los Angeles and provide media coverage in a country or countries outside the United States.) The lawsuit has been dismissed, but its juicy details have led many to take a closer look at the secret. HFPA.
THE Times told current HFPA members who accuse the group of arbitrarily rejecting “well-accredited foreign journalists” who run for members in favor of people who “are not serious journalists”. A member who obtained anonymity told the Times, “We admit people who are not real journalists because they are not a threat to anyone.”
An HFPA spokesman told the Times that Flaa’s claims are “entirely untrue”, but said the organization is “committed to dealing” with its lack of diversity. This year’s Golden Globe nominations were criticized for omitting from its two categories of best film films with casts mainly of blacks, Da 5 Bloods, Judas and the Black Messiah, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and not to name the critically acclaimed TV series I can destroy you, which features a cast of Black, in any category.
Many observers were also confused by the various important indications for Sia’s controversial and widely criticized film. Song and the TV series mentioned Emily in Paris. While the former remains unexplained, the Times reports that Paramount Television flew with more than 30 HFPA members to France in 2019 to visit the HFPA set. There, they were treated to “a two-night stay at the five-star Peninsula Paris hotel, where rooms currently cost about $ 1,400 a night, and a press conference and lunch at the Musée des Arts Forains, a private museum full of entertainment. tours dating from 1850, where the show was filmed, “the Times reported.
While an HFPA member told the Times that the reaction to the nominations was justified, the HFPA representative told the Times that “we do not control the individual votes of our members. … We seek to build cultural understanding through films and TV and recognize how the power of creative narrative can educate people around the world on issues of race, representation and orientation”
THE Times it also reported that HFPA has been paying its own members ever-increasing amounts of an ever-increasing pool of money generated by the organization’s TV deal with NBC. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, five board offers were paid between $ 63,433 and $ 135,957. Other members are paid to serve on HFPA committees and write for their website. Two dozen members of the foreign film screening committee received $ 3,465 each to watch foreign films last month. Members of a travel committee earn $ 2,310 per month, members of a film festival committee earn $ 1,100 per month and members of an archive committee earn $ 2,200. And members who moderate press conferences receive $ 1,200 a month.
THE Times talked to inspectors who said that this type of payment is not typical, especially for an organization that is exempt from taxes. He also noted that the TV and film academies do not pay their members (although the Film Academy has a staff of around 300, while HFPA would have only six employees).
“We are aware of the unprecedented economic challenges that our employees face due to the effects of the pandemic,” the HFPA spokesman told Times payments. “HFPA … will continue to compensate them for the range of services they provide to the organization.”
THE Times it also claimed that HFPA members were among the beneficiaries of a $ 125,000 emergency aid fund for journalists affected by the pandemic that the organization had established with the Los Angeles Press Club. The existence of the fund, one of the many philanthropic causes supported by HFPA, has been reported previously, but the fact that HFPA members themselves requested relief was not.
Diana Ljungaeus, executive director of the Los Angeles Press Club, said The Hollywood Reporter that a committee of members of its own board judged applications on merit alone and that the vast majority of recipients were not members of HFPA. (THR’s Scott Feinberg, one of the writers of this story, serves on the board of the Los Angeles Press Club.)
A source close to HFPA says The Hollywood Reporter that the organization “did not impose conditions on whom the LAPC provided grants, except that the money went to journalists in need in accordance with the LAPC’s charitable mission. Like all donors to reputable charitable organizations, we expect LAPC to use these funds in promoting their commendable charitable activities. “