Straight Journalist Downloads Grindr, Baits Closeted Athletes In Rio

The Daily Beast's Nico Hines is accused of baiting Olympians and potentially outing them.
From: NewNowNext

 The Daily Beast’s Nico Hines is facing heavy criticism today after penning an article that threatened to out a number of closeted gay athletes competing in Rio.

Noting reports of increased sexual activity and even sex parties in the Olympic village, Hines described downloading Grindr to lure gay Olympians under the promise of having sex, so that he could “report” on their Grindr usage.

But the post “potentially identified closeted athletes—including at least one from a country where gay sex is a crime,” according to Pink News.

Hines claims he “didn’t lie” to anyone he’d talked to, though he withheld the fact that he is straight and married with a child.

Calling the piece a ” dangerous disaster” and “wildly unethical train wreck,” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern outlined the potentially violent repercussions of Hines’ actions.

Wrote Stern:

The offensive purpose of Hines’ article is really the least of its problems. Far worse is the actual damage it will likely cause to real, live human beings—inevitable consequences that Hines blithely ignored.

Several athletes who are closeted at home (and possibly to their own teammates) will wake up on Thursday morning to the news that the Daily Beast has outed them. Their teammates could ostracize and alienate them; their families could disown them; their countries could imprison them. And for what? A homophobic article about how a straight guy conned gay Olympians from anti-gay countries into hitting on him through Grindr?

In response to online outrage, the piece was edited and renamed: Originally titled “I got three Grindr dates in an Hour in the Olympic Village,” it now bears the headline “The Other Olympic Sport in Rio: Swiping.”

Among the hundreds who expressed disgust over the article was out freeskier and Olympic silver medalist Gus Kenworthy:

So @NicoHines basically just outed a bunch of athletes in his quest to write a shitty @thedailybeast article where he admitted to entrapment

— Gus Kenworthy (@guskenworthy) August 11, 2016

Daily Beast editor in chief John Avlon added an editor’s note defending the piece’s merit but saying he was “sorry for any upset the original version of this piece inspired.”

“There was some concern that the original version of this story might out gay male athletes, even by implication, or compromise their safety,” Avlon wrote, noting that “all descriptions of the men and women’s profiles” were removed from the article.”

Update: Some time after 9pm, the site took the article down.

In it’s place is the following statement:

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.

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.

It is not clear if Hines is still with The Daily Beast.