HOLLYWOOD - The future of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has been in question for months, ever since the Los Angeles Times exposed its loose financial practices and lack of diversity. But with NBC’s announcement on Monday that it would not broadcast the Golden Globes in 2022, it began to seem that the HFPA might not survive the crisis.

Within the group, there has been infighting over how to reform and how to respond to its critics. But there also continues to be genuine bafflement about how things escalated to this point, as well as mounting anger that the clubby organization has become the focus of Hollywood’s struggles over diversity.

In their view, much of the criticism has been opportunistic. The most resonant detail from the Times’ report was the revelation that none of the HFPA’s nearly 90 members are Black, a fact which has been public information since at least 2013.

“They have known us for 30, 40, 50 years,” one member told Variety this week. “How could this have been a surprise?”

Many HFPA members contacted by Variety declined to comment or referred calls to Sunshine Sachs, the organization’s PR firm, as they had been instructed to do during an all-members meeting on Monday afternoon. But the half dozen who did comment argued that the organization — which is made up of entertainment correspondents, many representing European outlets and some semi- or fully retired — is being scapegoated for America’s racial issues.

Story Date: May 17, 2021