Today, The Daily Beast took an unprecedented but necessary step: We are removing an article from our site, âThe Other Olympic Sport In Rio: Swiping.â
The Daily Beast does not do this lightly. As shared in our editorâs 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. Weâre 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 Beastâs values. These valuesâwhich include standing up to bullies and bigots, and specifically being a proudly, steadfastly supportive voice for LGBT people all over the worldâare 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 doesnât 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.
