“A toxic place for working journalists,” is how two members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association described the group as they announced Thursday that they were leaving the group. They claim the majority of the Golden Globes organization’s members are resistant to efforts to improve diversity and ethical standards.
Upheaval over the organization’s historical lack of Black members and questionable relationships with film companies has already led to the cancellation of the group’s signature moneymaking event in January: the Golden Globe Awards.
In a letter written to the HFPA board and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Diederik van Hoogstraten of the Netherlands and Wenting Xu of China resigned their memberships and lambasted reform efforts by the organization as all show for the public, while actually accomplishing little behind the scenes.
“The HFPA continues to accommodate a toxic environment that undermines professional journalism,” the pair wrote in the letter. “The bullying of members by fellow members is left unquestioned and unpunished. The badgering of talent and publicists: ditto.”
They describe the culture of the HFPA as one of “insulation, silence, fear of retribution, self dealing, corruption and verbal abuse.”
Deadline reached out to the HFPA, but the organization had no official response.
The HFPA came under fire this year following a series of blistering Los Angeles Times reports, most notably about the 87-member organization’s number Black members: 0. The reports also questioned ethical practices of the group’s members.
The reports prompted various celebrities, publicists and production houses — including Netflix, Amazon and WarnerMedia — to back away from the HFPA and the Globes.
The HFPA has insisted it is committed to change. In May, its members approved a list of planned operational and structural changes, including the addition of 20 members this year, with a focus on adding Black journalists to the group’s ranks.
The plan also calls for a 50% membership increase over the next 18 months, with an accompanying loosening of membership requirements to open the organization to a wider array of journalists.
The HFPA released an anticipated timeline for implementing the changes, projecting an Aug. 2 completion date, and concluding with the installation of new board members and a new executive team.
In addition to expanding and diversifying membership, the changes also include a series of ethics and transparency measures, including a review of the organization’s press travel and a ban on accepting promotional items.
In their Thursday letter, however, the resigning members questioned the commitment to reform saying, “the majority of the membership resists deep change, despite our lawyers and spokespersons suggesting otherwise publicly.”
“We believe in a welcoming, healthy, respectful place where working international journalists in Los Angeles can develop and thrive,” they wrote. “That place is not the HFPA. After we leave we plan to build a transparent, professional and inclusive organization for the current and next generations of reporters who simply want to work together, without the toxicity.”
City News Service contributed to this report.