Owen Jones

Guardian columnist Owen Jones, who is an openly gay man, walked out of a live interview on Sky News on Sunday. Why did Jones walk out? It became increasingly uncomfortable for him after TV Presenter Mark Longhurst said the Orlando gunman targeted ‘human beings’ in general. To make the situation even worse for Jones his fellow panelist Julia Hartley-Brewer exclaimed the LGBT community has ‘no ownership of horror’. Jones held his ground as he explained that the shooting was ‘an intentional attack on LGBT people’.

"On Sky News last night, I realised how far some will go to ignore homophobia," writes Owen Jones. "The sexualities of those murdered in Orlando shouldn’t be glossed over. This was the worst mass killing of LGBT people in the west since the Holocaust."

Owen Jones writes:

It wasn’t only Sky News at fault. In the New York Times’ original reporting, it didn’t even point out that a gay club had been targeted. The Daily Mail didn’t bother to put the atrocity – the worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 – on its front page, instead opting to stir up xenophobia over Turkish immigrants and publicising an offer of “free pearl and white sapphire earrings”. This is erasure of LGBT people – pure and simple – after their community was horrifically targeted. READ MORE