Julia Hartley-Brewer has penned a scathing response to Owen Jones and claimed he has more in common with Islamic State than he thinks.
Ms Hartley-Brewer, who is a talkRADIO presenter and Telegraph columnist, has said she will not apologise to Mr Jones and has criticised Sky News for apologising to him.
Mr Jones, who is a Guardian and former Independent columnist, clashed with co-panelist Ms Hartley-Brewer and host Mark Longhurst on Sky News Press Preview on Sunday night.
Mr Jones stormed out of the interview about the mass shooting in Orlando in protest at the interviewer’s refusal to name the atrocity as an assault on LGBT people.
Writing in a comment piece for The Telegraph, Ms Hartley-Brewer said she does not understand what Mr Jones found unpleasant about the incident on air and called his decision to walk out a “childish tantrum”.
Ms Hartley-Brewer emphasised the fact she had named the killing as homophobic in the initial interview. “Neither the Sky presenter Mark Longhurst nor I said anything that was offensive, wrong or bigoted in any way,” she said.
By lunchtime on Monday, OfCom had received almost 60 complaints about the programme, saying Ms Hartley-Brewer and Mr Longhurst had been dismissive of Mr Jones’s argument that the attack was one on the LGBT community.
Ms Hartley-Brewer criticised Sky News for apologising to Mr Jones and said they had been pressured into the decision.
“Sky News have chosen to try to dampen down the hysteria by releasing an apology for any offence caused by Mark Longhurst,” she said. “I believe they were quite wrong to be bullied into doing this.”
“Owen Jones does not deserve an apology and he certainly won’t be getting one from me,” she continued. “And neither does anyone else who has jumped on the perpetually offended bandwagon.”
She concluded the piece by saying, “If Owen Jones wants to live in a world where people can only say what is on the officially approved list of platitudes, then perhaps he has more in common with Islamic State than he thinks.”
Writing in a Guardian column yesterday, Mr Jones expanded on his reasons for walking out, arguing that some people will do all they can to ignore homophobia.
He asserted that it was possible for the killing to be simultaneously described as more than one thing at the same time. He also argued that if a terrorist walked into a synagogue we would rightly label it as both terrorism and antisemitism.
He also referred to the host Mr Longhurst, saying, “He not only refused to accept it as an attack on LGBT people, but was increasingly agitated that I - as a gay man - would claim it as such”.
On Twitter, Mr Jones also asked the public to leave co-panelist Ms Hartley-Brewer alone. “None of the abuse directed at her is in my name,” he wrote.
Patrick Strudwick, the LGBT editor of BuzzFeed News UK, has refused to speak to Ms Hartley-Brewer in a phone interview about the Orlando killing, saying that she had failed to show respect to the LGBT community in the wake of the tragedy. Mr Strudwick posted his reply to the email request on Twitter.
Forty-nine people were killed and 53 were injured after a gunman, apparently inspired by Isis, stormed LGBT nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida in the early hours of Sunday morning. It was the biggest mass shooting in US history.
In the initial interview on Sunday night, Mr Jones disagreed with both Ms Hartley-Brewer and Mr Longhurst after arguing there had been a lack of LGBT voices in mainstream news commentary of the killing.
“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,” he said.
Mr Longhurst interjected and said the killing had been committed against “human beings” who were “trying to enjoy themselves, whatever their sexuality”.
Later, Jones claimed Mr Longhurst “could not understand” because he himself was not gay.
The situation quickly escalated with Mr Jones saying, “I’ve had enough of this,” and removing his microphone, leaving the set and saying he was upset by the incident. The pair continued with their discussion of the event without his contribution.
Mr Jones and Sky News did not immediately respond to request for comment.
