Editor’s note: This article previously stated that Skorka Navai was ousted from the organization. The Golden Globes confirmed this was not the case. Ms. Navai left the Golden Globes/Eldridge Company amicably on her own terms to pursue other endeavors. While Ms. Navai continues her 45-year career as an independent entertainment journalist, she is also launching a consulting, public relations, and event planning firm in Los Angeles and her hometown, Budapest, a filming hub for Hollywood.
The Golden Globes has expelled two voters. Howaida Hamdy and Munawar Hosain 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.)
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 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.
