The Golden Globes has expelled three voters. Howaida Hamdy, Munawar Hosain and Aniko Navai have been ousted for violating the organization’s code of conduct, according to media reports.
Hamdy, an Egyptian journalist, was under investigation for writing on social media that “Hollywood is the Zionists’ stronghold” and allegedly publishing other anti-Israel and anti-Semitic comments in her work, TheWrap previously reported.
Hosain was initially disciplined by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the now-disbanded organization that ran the Globes until recently, when he was found to have scalped his tickets to the 2017 ceremony for $39,000. At the time, TheWrap reported exclusively, the Bangladeshi-born Hosain was banned from receiving tickets for two years. (Hosain claimed that he had given the tickets to a friend, and that he himself was not responsible for the sale.)
As of Sunday evening, Sept. 24, Hamdy, Hosain and the Hungarian-born Navai’s photos and biographies remain on the “Voters Biographies” page on the Golden Globes website. That page, which in the past had contained biographies of the approximately 100 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, now lists 289 journalists, some of whom were HFPA members but most of whom were not.
Existing members of the embattled organization had been given the opportunity to remain as paid voters for the Globes.
The housecleaning that led to the three expulsions came at a time when the Globes are trying to build up their credibility after years in which the organization and its awards show have been on the edge of extinction.
The show had been reeling for years, with NBC cancelling the 2022 broadcast after a scathing Los Angeles Times article in February 2021 revealed that the HFPA had no Black members among its then 87 members, as well as detailing numerous accusations of improper behavior within the organization, which TheWrap has exclusively reported for many years.
The HFPA vowed to reform, drafting a new code of professional and ethical conduct approved by members in May 2021 and endeavoring to diversify its membership. But with Hollywood continuing to hold the organization at arm’s length, Elridge Industries owner Todd Boehly and Dick Clark Productions stepped in to buy the Globes and make it a for-profit enterprise, beginning the process of dissolving the HFPA and recruiting unpaid voters to augment the former HFPA members who would remain.
In a late August move clearly designed to bring the awards more credibility, the Globes announced the hiring of longtime Variety reporter and editor Tim Gray as executive vice president. Last week, the organization announced that Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner had been hired as showrunners for the 2024 ceremony, which at the moment doesn’t have a broadcast deal in place.
The expulsions were first reported by Deadline. That outlet is owned by PMC, which also owns Dick Clark Productions in a joint venture with Eldridge Industries.
Steve Pond contributed to this report.
