The newly appointed editor of Gay Times magazine has been sacked after a host of his foul tweets emerged that took aim at a cross section of religious and sexual groups.
Jews, obese people, Egyptians, lesbians, mothers, bus drivers, children with disabilities, and Asians are just a few of the types Josh Rivers chose to publicly excoriate on Twitter between 2010 and 2015.
He was suspended within hours of being discovered before quickly issuing a grovelling apology for tweets like the following:
He is also said to have described transgender people as ‘trannies’, while another tweet reportedly read: “Long day. How would I type that with Chinese accent? Wong way?”
Others hit out at lesbians and a number of posts abused ‘fat’ or ‘ugly’ people.
Now Rivers has been sacked by the magazine and his contract terminated with “immediate effect” – after just one month in the job – in the wake of public uproar that followed Buzzfeed News UK publishing the original claims.
Gay Times has since apologised to its readers and distanced itself from Rivers’ behaviour, saying:
We sincerely apologise for the offence that has been caused, particularly to those members of our wider community to whom such inappropriate and unacceptable commentary was the focus.
A statement from Gay Times regarding Josh Rivers. pic.twitter.com/nJ7gDLxE7e
— Gay Times (@GayTimesMag) November 16, 2017
In a statement made to Buzzfeed before he was sacked, Rivers attributed his prejudices to his environment.
“I am a product of my environment – like many of us are,” he said, adding: “I have said things that are not kind or not nice and nor do they reflect the type of person that I have become.”
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