Live TV Segment on Orlando Terror Attack Boils Over as Panelist Literally Storms Off Stage

A debate on the Orlando terrorist attack at Sky News escalated quickly after one panelist got frustrated with the other two reporters for "deflecting" away from the attacker's homophobic motivation.

According to Owen Jones, an openly-gay columnist for The Guardian, the gunman very clearly hated gays. He said, had the shooter gone into a synagogue and killed Jewish people, the media would rightly emphasize the killer's anti-Semitic inspiration.

It seemed to irritate Owens that, in his view, news outlets have downplayed the LGBT targeting associated with the Sunday morning attack. Sky News reporter Mark Longhurst asserted the attack was "carried out against human beings," but ultimately clashed with Jones, who said, "You don't understand, 'cause you're not gay, OK?"

Panelist Julia Hartley-Brewer came to Longhurst's defense, saying it was an attack on civilized humanity and it is not clear how much of the attack was actually motivated by homophobia. But that didn't satisfy Jones.

"Why are you trying to deflect?!" he asked, adding that the debate is "the most astonishing thing I’ve ever been involved in on television."

The Guardian writer said his two fellow panelists were being "bizarre" for not accepting the fact that the attack was against gay people. And at that, he stormed off the stage, telling Hartley-Brewer and Longhurst, "I've had enough."

In a Guardian column published Monday, Jones wrote that the attack that left 49 people dead was homophobia as well as a terrorist attack.

"It is not enough to simply condemn violence: we have to understand what it is and why it happened," he wrote, blaming Sky News, the New York Times  and the Daily Mail for downplaying the homophobic angle of the ordeal.

"This is erasure of LGBT people – pure and simple – after their community was horrifically targeted," he claimed.

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