Broadcaster sorry for ‘gay shame’ article featuring Radcliffe
By Josh Haggis
Middle Eastern Broadcasting Center (MBC) has apologised for publishing a so-called “gay list of shame” article that featured famous faces including Daniel Radcliffe, Cameron Diaz and Elton John.
The list, which was published on MBC.net, incorrectly lists the Harry Potter star as gay, falsely describes Cameron Diaz as bisexual, and claims that Elton John wore a wedding dress when he married David Furnish earlier this year.
Other celebrities named in the article – which has yet to be removed from the website – include Ricky Martin, Jodie Foster and Neil Patrick Harris, reports The Independent. Rihanna and Lindsay Lohan, neither of whom identifies as LGBT, are featured in the article too.
Following an online furore, MBC has released an official statement apologising for offending both its readers and the celebrities mentioned in the article. Read it below.
“One of the junior editors of the website published an article offending some of the big Hollywood celebrity names, which by no means was reflective of the sites editorial policy nor point of view, without prior verification of the facts of the story plagiarised from another official site, ultimately offending a list of popular celebrities loved and followed in the Arab world.
Regretfully, the editor in question had plagiarised the news off another Arabic website without factual verification of the article, therefore going against two of the major pillars of journalism: cross checking the validity of the news; and discrediting and not attributing the actual site from which the news was retrieved, causing a ripple effect of disciplinary action and investigative measures from the website’s end towards the employee in question, who is now on probation, and continues to investigate any other source that reflects the same with such irresponsible behaviour.
Mbc.net apologises from its readers and the named celebrities, for the article that was published earlier on the scoop section of the site www.mb.net/scoop, and that is clearly not related to neither the presenter of the show ‘Scoop with Raya’, Raya Abi Rached, nor the show itself.”
However, the original article remains online at MBC.net and can be read here.