The addition of the incendiary right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos to Friday’s lineup for the HBO late-night series “Real Time With Bill Maher” quickly proved controversial on Wednesday evening when another guest, the journalist Jeremy Scahill, said he would not appear on the show because of Mr. Yiannopoulos’s booking.

Mr. Scahill, a co-founder and editor of the news site The Intercept, announced his decision on Twitter only hours after Mr. Yiannopoulos’s scheduled appearance was made public. Mr. Scahill said that allowing Mr. Yiannopoulos to appear on “Real Time” was “many bridges too far.”

“He has ample venues to spew his hateful diatribes,” Mr. Scahill said in a statement. “There is no value in ‘debating’ him. Appearing on ‘Real Time’ will provide Yiannopoulos with a large, important platform to openly advocate his racist, anti-immigrant campaign. It will be exploited by Yiannopoulos in an attempt to legitimize his hateful agenda.”