Love & Hip Hop Atlanta‘s Prince Carter made headlines last month when news of his casting as part of the show’s first gay male couple broke. Starcasm covered the story, as did The Blast, Lipstick Alley, Hip-Hop Vibe, and The Hollywood Gossip, among other sites. Prince and his boyfriend Zachary Jones have been spotted filming for the show, though VH1 has yet to confirm the LHHATL Season 8 cast (and likely won’t until closer to the premiere).
But one major site ignored the story — and now Prince is claiming that the site ignored him because it’s biased against gay people. According to Prince Carter, The Shade Room turned down the story of he and Zachary’s casting specifically because the two men are gay.
An anonymous source provided us with texts allegedly between Prince’s people and a TSR employee. In the texts, the word “gay” is capitalized, and at one point the alleged employee uses the phrase “GAY sh!t” to describe what the person says is a “fraud” of a story.
Here are the receipts:
We reached out to Prince Carter for a comment. “If this news is true, I will pray for those individuals,” Prince told us. “Media outlets are supposed to remain neutral. This should never be about personal feelings; this is business. And a win for me is a for us all.”
It’s worth repeating that there’s not yet been official confirmation of either Prince Carter of Zachary Jones’ casting in and filming for the new season of Love & Hip Hop Atlanta. It’s probably for that reason that several other major sites known for covering the Love & Hip Hop franchise — for example, both BET and Bossip — have yet to run Prince and Zachary’s story.
At the same time, a simple “No thanks” would have sufficed. And Prince’s claims come during a high-profile feud between the site and Cardi B, who’s gone on Instagram several times in the past few weeks to accuse TSR of being biased against her.
(Photo credits: Prince Carter via Instagram)
John Sharp is a Starcasm’s chief editorial correspondent-at-large. Tips: E-mail at john@starcasm.net or send on Twitter at @john_starcasm.
