Owen Jones Walks Off Sky News In Row Over Orlando Shooter's Homophobia
The shooting “was an intentional attack against LGBT people”, the Guardian columnist said, before accusing the presenter and another guest of “deflecting” the attacker’s motive.
Owen Jones appeared on Sky News on Sunday evening to discuss the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, which has claimed the lives of at least 50 people.
The Guardian columnist, who was invited on to the show as a representative of the LGBT community to discuss British newspapers' front pages, became increasingly frustrated as fellow guest Julia Hartley-Brewer and host Mark Longhurst appeared to "deflect" the apparent motive behind the shooting during the segmen.
As many as 50 people died after a gunman — named as 29-year-old Omar Mir Seddique Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida — opened fire at around 2am local time on Sunday in the busy gay nightclub Pulse.
Fifty-three people were also injured in the attack, the single worst shooting atrocity in modern U.S. history.
Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, told journalists his son had become angry after he saw two men kissing one another, roughly two months ago. Seddique speculated that this may have been the motivation for the attack.
On the segment, Jones said: "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."
He continued: "It is one of the worst atrocities committed against LGBT people in the western world for generations, and it has to be called out as such."
Both Hartley-Brewer and Longhurst took exception to Jones' comments that the attack was focused and targeted the LGBT community.
Longhurst interjected: "But it's something that's carried out against human beings, isn't it?" He returned to the theme by saying the shooting was an attack "on the freedom of all people to try and enjoy themselves".
The columnist became increasingly frustrated at both Hartley-Brewer and Longhurst, noting that had Mateen walked into a synagogue and murdered Jewish individuals, "you would be talking about it as an anti-Semitic attack. This was a deliberate attack on LGBT people."
Eventually, unbuttoning his microphone, Jones said: "I've had enough of this," and walked off the set.