August 12, 2016 | Sex & Society

"The Daily Beast" writer in trouble over Grindr article

Yesterday was not a good day to be Nico Hines (pictured).

Hines is an editor and writer for The Daily Beast, a left leaning site that reports on news and popular culture. One of the site's claims is that "we love confronting bullies, bigots and hypocrites." Apparently, Hines decided being a bit of a bully and hypocrite was a lot more fun.

Hines wrote a story about Grindr use at the Rio Olympics. For the article, he created a Grindr profile and pretending to be looking for a hook-up. Of course, no hook-up actually took place -- as Hines pointed out in the piece, he is a straight married man -- but the brief meeting provided juicy little details to include in his article.

Although he did not use anyone's real names, he did list where the guys he met were from and even provided their stats.

Hines claimed he was honest throughout the process. He used his real photo. He admitted he was a journalist if anyone asked (Note: ask all potential Grindr dates if they are reporters or not.) He did not, apparently, tell anyone he was working on a story.

And the ultimate take-away from the piece? Athletes, like other people, use dating apps and have sex. Um, duh!

Readers and social media users were not impressed. They accused Hines of not only being homophobic by catfishing gay men actually looking to meet (and using the info as clickbait for his article), but of also effectively putting some people's lives in danger by outing them.

The backlash was loud enough to force The Daily Beast to edit the article, removing much of the controversial content. The site included a note about the change:

There was some concern that the original version of this story might out gay male athletes, even by implication, or compromise their safety. This was never our reporter’s intention, of course. No names were ever used and some of the profiles described were of straight women. But there was a concern that even mentioning the home nation of some gay athletes could compromise their safety. As a result, we have removed all descriptions of the men and women’s profiles that we previously described.

The Daily Beast refused to remove the piece, probably expecting the anger to subside.

It did not. Here are some interesting takes on the issue from other sites:

     This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical [Slate]

     The Daily Beast tried to prove Olympians like sex, but instead may have outed gay athletes [Vox]

     Daily Beast slammed for putting gay Olympians at risk with exposé [Yahoo! Sports]

And the list goes on. Then, at around 9PM yesterday, the article was finally removed.

Editors released a statement, which read, in part:

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.”

 

... Our initial reaction was that the entire removal of the piece was not necessary. We were wrong.

 

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.

 

... The article was not intended to do harm or degrade members of the LGBT community, but intent doesn’t matter, impact does. ...

 

We screwed up. We will do better.