HFPA FACING BIAS, ABUSE LAWSUIT
Member of Golden Globes group says he was victim of racism, sexual harassment.
Husam “Sam” Asi, a longstanding member the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., is suing the organization over a battery of claims, including sexual harassment, discrimination and breach of contract.
The suit, filed in L.A. Superior Court on Thursday, comes three months after the HFPA, the group behind the Golden Globes, put Asi on probation following allegations of sexual misconduct, prompting a thirdparty investigation into him.
Asi’s suit alleges that the HFPA is “weaponizing false sexual misconduct allegations” in retaliation for “his attempts to hold it accountable.”
He said he was personally and professionally damaged by the HFPA investigation, adding that he was placed on probation with the BBC and his newspaper and lost his source of income.
In February, the Wrap reported that three women alleged that Asi — who represents the United Kingdom and the Middle East for the association and is a Palestinian journalist for the BBC Arabic service and a columnist for the pan-Arabic newspaper Al Quds al Arabi — “abused their trust by turning professional situations into sexualized encounters.”
Asi called the misconduct allegations against him baseless. “Of course, I deny
them. I deny them all. They are ludicrously absurd,” he told The Times in February.
According to his lawsuit, Asi, a member of the HFPA since 2010, contends that he has “been subjected to and endured a pattern of sexual harassment, hostile behavior, racial epithets and discrimination, and retaliatory conduct, none of which was ever investigated or handled according to HFPA’s bylaws and procedures.”
“The HFPA is not in receipt of this suit, however our position remains the same — that a member has been accused by a third party of significant and serious charges,” HFPA spokesman James Lee said in a statement. “We have a disciplinary review process involving a comprehensive investigation by an outside firm that all members are subject to. We will respect the integrity of the investigative process and await its findings before determining what course of action to take.“
Among the allegations outlined in the suit, Asi claims that on more than one occasion during news conferences, an HFPA board member “grabbed” his “buttocks.” This same member also invited him to her house to “teach him how to do ‘good sex,’ ” according to the lawsuit.
Further, Asi alleges that he was subjected to offensive comments from HFPA members, including being referred to as a “terrorist.”
The suit alleges that when Asi asked the association’s former president, the late Lorenzo Soria, why he wasn’t given any jobs working on the Golden Globes website or any committee positions for seven years, he was told that it was because he was “an ‘angry Arab.’ ”
In another instance, the suit claims that an HFPA member allegedly told Asi, “‘I hate Jews more than you do’, falsely assuming that, because of his ethnicity, Dr. Asi hates Jewish people. Dr. Asi was then told by the same member that Jewish members were scheming to get him expelled from HFPA, which later turned out not to be true.”
Last year, The Times reported that Asi called out the HFPA over its own conduct concerning race. During a meeting in 2020 — after the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the country — to discuss hiring a diversity consultant, Asi told the group he’d worked in many countries in many fields but never encountered as many “racist comments” as in the HFPA.
“I always have to explain and defend who I am ... my ethnicity and the people I came from or even the religion,” he said. “I heard from other members who also encountered this problem.”
The group voted not to hire a diversity consultant at that time, but it did hire a diversity officer last year.
Asi’s lawsuit further alleges that when he created a website for HFPA members “to increase transparency,” the board shut it down last March “to prevent leaks.”
“HFPA’s current leadership and President heavily rely on Goeckner and Lee,” the suit says in reference to Greg Goeckner, the HFPA’s longtime chief operating officer and lawyer, and Lee, its crisis public relations consultant. “They do not question their decisions or motivations despite evidence of self-dealing.”
According to the suit, Asi is being used as a scapegoat because “The HFPA, under fire in the Los Angeles Times and other media for failing so miserably to keep its house in order, is using the false claims against Dr. Asi as an opportunity to make it appear as if it takes allegations seriously and is changing its culture.”
The suit comes as the HFPA attempts to move beyond the controversy sparked by The Times investigation in February 2021 that raised questions of ethical and financial lapses and revealed that the then-87member association did not have any Black members.
NBC chose not to broadcast the Golden Globes this year as the HFPA announced reform measures, including adopting new bylaws, establishing a new code of conduct, expanding its membership and opening an anonymous hotline for complaints about members.
The organization has been at odds over a proposal by interim Chief Executive Todd Boehly that will effectively transform the nonprofit international journalists’ group into a for-profit venture.