***image1**The frontman of an Australian TV news programme has apologised for mocking transgender people after one of his station's Olympic Games reporters was allegedly mugged by people she referred to as "transvestites." Today Show host Karl Stefanovic repeatedly laughed about the incident, referring repeatedly joking about "trannies." The station flashed up an image of actor Hugo Weaving in drag in the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Stefanovic chortled and laughed, asking if that was the person they Rio police would be looking for. Following a backlash on social media Stefanovic apologised, saying he was educating himself about the matter of transgender people. “I pride myself, in my own weird way, of being across things," he said. "Yesterday I wasn’t. Yesterday, I got it very wrong. I used a word which I will now say for the last time ever. By using the word ‘tranny’, I offended an awful lot of beautiful and sensitive people. I honestly didn’t know the negative and deeply hurtful impact that word has, not only on members of the LGBTQI community, but on their family and their friends,” he said. He said he had crossed a line he did not know existed.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 30th July 2016 - 1:20pm