The horrific events in Orlando this weekend have shocked people around the world, but already the fallout has been marred with political bickering. We’ll leave Donald Trump’s tweets to one side, but here’s Guardian columnist Owen Jones walking off Sky News, after his fellow presenters played down the homophobic nature of the shootings.
Jones was on the show to discuss Monday morning’s newspapers, when he became frustrated with what he sayguest Julia Hartley-Brewer and host Mark Longhurst not acknowledging that it was a direct hate crime on the LGBT community, and just as Longhurst put it, an attack “on the freedom of all people to try and enjoy themselves.”
Jones, who is gay himself, replied:
This was a deliberate attack on LGBT people, in a LGBT venue. It was a homophobic attack, do you not understand that.
The debate appeared to cool down for a few minutes after that, but when the subject came up again Jones had had enough and left the show while it was still on air.
He also criticised the lack of gay voices in the news:
At the end of the day this was a homophobic hate crime, as well as terrorism, and it has to be called out as, I have to say, on Sky News and lots of news channels, there’s not been many LGBT voices that I’ve heard.
