Out Olympic swimmer, Amini Fonua, who represents Tonga at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, lashed out at The Daily Beast and writer Nico Hines for out gay athletes at the Olympics, some of whom are Fonua’s friends.
Fonua, who has represented Tonga in the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, was beside himself with disgust at the article by Nico Hines of The Daily Beast. In the article Hines, a straight man, bragged about going on the gay dating app Grindr and getting Olympic athletes to reveal their identities to him. He then posted their descriptions in The Daily Beast article. One of the athletes, by Hines’ own admission in the article, was from a country with anti-gay laws.
Fonua took to Twitter to let Nico Hines have it. (See below.)
The editors have since apologized and removed the article from their site;
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. And we apologize to the athletes who may have been inadvertently compromised by our story.
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 were wrong. We will do better.
For many, this was too little too late.
(via Out Sports)
