Gio Benitez is the openly gay, Cuban-American co-anchor of the weekend edition of Good Morning America gracing the cover of the latest issue of The Advocate!
The Emmy-winning journalist, who came out to his family when he was 24, told the magazine (Out's sister publication) that being gay in the public eye is all about “authenticity.”
“[In] television, especially television news, you really have to be authentically you,” Benitez said. This authenticity and devotion to providing his audience with accurate information has served Benitez well, because GMA is currently dominating the weekend ratings.
Benitez’s career as a journalist has taken him all over covering harrowing, often history-making stories. He reported from El Chapo’s tunnels after he escaped from a Mexican prison, was on the “research vessel with the explorer who found the Titanic,” was the first reporter to interview a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting, and is currently on the ground covering the tragic aftermath of the wildfires in Maui.
But the GMA anchor also covers more emotionally driven human interest stories. He recently introduced his audience to a group of transgender youth when he hosted the ABC News special Our America: Who I’m Meant to Be.
“It was the first time on television that six young trans people came together…and we held a town hall where they talked about who they are, and we dove deep into their everyday lives,” Benitez said. “And what you see is that they are just everyday kids.”
This experience showed that one of the barriers to acceptance is the fact that many people have yet to meet a trans person. “I heard from a lot of people who watched that, who felt that they now had a better understanding of what it means [to be transgender] because obviously, we’re seeing many headlines about the trans community, but we’re not necessarily truly meeting these individuals,” he said.
After he married TV and podcast host Tommy DiDario in 2016, photos of the couple went viral and Benitez started to see the impact of being openly gay in the public eye.
“I heard from all of these kids, and I heard from their parents as well,” he explained. “Some of these parents were not accepting of their children, and they wrote to me and said, ‘I have now apologized to my child because I saw your picture and I realized everything’s going to be okay.’”
To learn more about Gio Benitez read the full profile at the The Advocate.