Medal count | Olympic schedule | Olympic news

RIO DE JANEIRO – Ever since the Sochi Games were cheekily called “The Tinder Olympics,” the use of dating apps by athletes in their Olympic Village has been an assumed part of the experience. Stories have been written about it. Condom reserves have been increased because of it.

So Nico Hines, a reporter in Rio for the Daily Beast, had an idea for a trend story: Sign up for four dating apps, and then see if he could hook Olympic athletes into meeting hm at the Village.

“For the record, I didn’t lie to anyone or pretend to be someone I wasn’t—unless you count being on Grindr in the first place—since I’m straight, with a wife and child. I used my own picture (just of my face…) and confessed to being a journalist as soon as anyone asked who I was,” he wrote, somehow convincing himself that a straight male reporter using a gay dating app for something other than dating isn’t “pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

Hines found instant success, “scoring three dates in the first hour,” thus proving that … um, well, we’re not sure what this was all supposed to prove. Adults use dating apps? Athletes are horny? Hines has a nice beard?

But in its original incarnation, Hines’s article went from problematic – straight reporter baiting gay athletes on a dating app for a story – to downright dangerous for some of the athletes he interacted with.

View photos Twitter More

The original story had enough biographical details about the athletes where their identities were easily found through web searches, including those of a gay athlete from Kazakhstan, a place notorious for violence against the LGBT community.

The backlash was swift and immediate, including from Gus Kenworthy, the Olympic medalist skier who came out in 2015.

View photos

Hines’s piece was also pilloried by Slate:

It’s worth exploring why Hines embarked upon this weird, sleazy quest in the first place. I count two reasons. The first is that Hines simply enjoys tittering with condescension at all the gay athletes who take the bait and engage with him—a straight dude, as Hines emphatically reminds us. Why else zero in on Grindr? The second reason is more repulsive: Hines appears to take pleasure in luring in these Olympians then outing them to all the world.

But the offensive purpose of Hines’ article is really the least of its problems. Far worse is the actual damage it will likely cause to real, live human beings—inevitable consequences that Hines blithely ignored. Several athletes who are closeted at home (and possibly to their own teammates) will wake up on Thursday morning to the news that the Daily Beast has outed them.

From Mic, which slammed the journalistic ethics the story lacked:

The code of ethics also clearly states: “Avoid undercover or surreptitious methods of gathering information unless traditional, open methods will not yield information vital to the public.”

Though Hines says he “confessed to being a journalist as soon as anyone asked who [he] was,” he never says he confessed to being a straight person who was ready to out athletes.

Hines chose to use “surreptitious methods,” but delivered no vital information in this article. His piece doesn’t respect his subjects: It mocks gay people and treats them like zoo animals behind a glass barrier.

And by Chris Hine (no relation), a gay sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune:

That is just about the worst thing you could do as a journalist covering gay athletes. Their No. 1 fear is being outed in any form. — Chris Hine (@ChristopherHine) August 11, 2016





We asked Cyd Zeigler, founder of the gay sports website Outsports, his thoughts on the story. “I don’t have a problem with anyone going on Grindr or any dating app. They all come with their own risks,” he said. “The issue with what he did was then essentially narrow the field to small groups, like a team of 12 people from a particular country. That’s pretty low. I would never do that. Heck I wouldn’t even narrow it to an NFL team of 53.

Story continues