Los Angeles (AFP)
The organization which awards the prestigious Golden Globes, strongly criticized by Hollywood for the lack of diversity among its members, adopted on Thursday a series of reforms to improve its representativeness and try to calm the controversy.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is a group of about 90 journalists who are the jury for the Golden Globes, among the most coveted awards in the United States behind the Oscars.
The organization has been at the heart of the turmoil since media revealed last February that it has no black members within it.
In the process, a group of a hundred publicists in the entertainment industry had officially written to the HFPA, urging it to put an end to "its discriminatory behavior, its unprofessionalism, its ethical failures and accusations of corruption. financial ", criticisms already formulated by the Time's Up movement.
On Thursday, the association's members overwhelmingly approved a series of measures to remedy the situation, including a 50% increase in their membership in the next 18 months, including the recruitment of black journalists, as well as the reform. opaque and restrictive system governing admissions.
"The very majority vote to reform the Association today reaffirms our determination to change," HFPA President Ali Sar said in a statement.
“Because we understand the urgency and the challenge of transparency, we will continually update our members as we move forward to make our organization more inclusive and diverse,” he wrote.
"We understand that the hard work begins now. We remain committed to becoming a better organization and an example of diversity, transparency and accountability," said Mr. Sar.
A member of the HFPA who asked to remain anonymous told AFP that only "a very small number said no or abstained, the majority said yes" to these reforms.
"I am so relieved. We have to change, we have to improve if we are to survive," added the member.
Always prestigious, but in decline in recent years, the Golden Globes had begun to question their future after threats of boycott caused by recent controversies.
Former president Philip Berk was struck off last month for circulating an email calling Black Lives Matter a "hate movement" and two consultants hired by the HFPA to address its diversity shortfall have resigned, failing to see the situation evolve.
Most of the members of the HFPA are correspondents working regularly for media known and respected in their country, such as Le Figaro or El Pais.
But the reputation of this very unusual jury has suffered in the past from the presence of a handful of more surprising personalities, with journalistic activity as episodic as it is confidential (a former Russian bodybuilder who played in B films, the widow of an actor writing for Tahitian media, etc.).
Above all, the organization has been repeatedly criticized for the lack of attention given to black or minority artists, often snubbed in the Golden Globes charts.
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