'We were wrong': Daily Beast slammed for article 'outing' gay Olympic athletes using Grindr
A US news website has sparked outrage after a reporter walked around the Olympic Village, ‘luring’ gay male athletes using a dating app.
A story uploaded to The Daily Beast, allegedly outed the athlete’s sexuality in an “expose” on Thursday.
The piece focused on how easy it was to score a date with an Olympian in Rio via Grindr, the gay hook-up app.
Reporter Nico Hines piece was titled “I Got Three Grindr Dates in an Hour in the Olympic Village”.
It was almost immediately slammed for potentially putting athletes at risk and invading their privacy.
In one instance, the reporter offered the height, weight and nationality of one athlete from a country where violence against LGBTI is common.
Hines is The Daily Beast’s London writer.
He is a heterosexual and married father of one.
OutSports reports only 48 of the 10,500 athletes at Rio publicly identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex.
Two-time Olympic swimmer from Tonga, Amini Fonua, lashed out at the piece on Twitter saying it was “deplorable”.
“Imagine the one space you can feel safe, the one space you're able to be yourself, ruined by a straight person who thinks it's all a joke?
“No straight person will ever know the pain of revealing your truth, to take that away is just... I can't. It literally brings me to tears.”
“Some of these people you just outed are my FRIENDS. With family and lives that are forever going to be affected by this.
“It is still illegal to be gay in Tonga, and while I'm strong enough to be me in front of the world, not everybody else is. Respect that.”
High-profile gay commentator Dan Savage was also scathing of Hines story, and called for the website to take it down.
“So... straight "journalist" for @thedailybeast probably gonna get some gay guy killed with this piece,” Savage wrote on Twitter.
After plenty of backlash, the story was removed on Thursday night.
The URL now points to a “Note from the Editors” which reads: “We were wrong. We will do better.”
News break – August 12
