Joe.My.God. LGBT News
Outsports reports:
The International Olympic Committee has condemned as “simply unacceptable” a since-deleted story on the Daily Beast where a straight reporter posed as gay on Grindr to do a feature on sex at the Olympics. The IOC indicated in an email to Outsports that the writer, Nico Hines, is no longer in Rio.
“We understand the organization concerned recalled the journalist after complaints and withdrew the story,” an IOC spokesperson told Outsports today in an email statement. “This kind of reporting is simply unacceptable.” It’s the IOC’s first response since the controversy broke on Thursday.
It could not be immediately confirmed if Hines is still in Rio. However, his last story on the Daily Beast‘s website was Aug. 9, two days before his story about Olympics sex was posted. He also has not tweeted since Aug. 10, a day before the story appeared. An email to the Daily Beast concerning Hines’ status has not been answered as of now.
A petition calling for Hines to be fired has over 9000 signatures. My original story on the controversy is here. The Daily Beast deleted the original article with this apology:
Today, The Daily Beast took an unprecedented but necessary step: We are removing an article from our site, “The Other Olympic Sport In Rio: Swiping.”
The Daily Beast does not do this lightly. As shared in our editor’s note earlier today, we initially thought swift removal of any identifying characteristics and better clarification of our intent was the adequate way to address this. Our initial reaction was that the entire removal of the piece was not necessary. We were wrong. We’re sorry.
Today we did not uphold a deep set of The Daily Beast’s values. These values—which include standing up to bullies and bigots, and specifically being a proudly, steadfastly supportive voice for LGBT people all over the world—are core to our commitment to journalism and to our commitment to serving our readers.
As a newsroom, we succeed together and we fail together, and this was a failure on The Daily Beast as a whole, not a single individual. The article was not intended to do harm or degrade members of the LGBT community, but intent doesn’t matter, impact does. Our hope is that removing an article that is in conflict with both our values and what we aspire to as journalists will demonstrate how seriously we take our error.
We screwed up. We will do better.