Nick Cohen and the Observer

[Serge Forward]

I've known a few drunks in my time, not many were gropy cunts. Drunks who do grope are the same calibre as non drunks who grope. Using "I was drunk" as an excuse makes no fucking sense. Drunk or sober, Nick Cohen is always a cunt.

 

[Dystopiary]

His wikipedia page now, after months of furious editing:



The Daily Beast is now on it:

The Financial Times has previously appeared dedicated to holding powerful institutions—including TikTok and the World Health Organization—to account over allegations of sexual misconduct.

Fellow members of the British media, however, seem to deserve less of the UK-based paper’s scrutiny, according to a damning New York Times report.

As is the National:

A STAR columnist in London’s political media scene was confidentially handed a “big cash payment” in return for stepping down amid a hushed-up probe into allegations of sexual harassment, according to reports in the New York Times.


The US paper took an interest in the case of Nick Cohen – a former columnist for the Observer and Private Eye who has also written regularly for the Spectator – after seven women reportedly accused him of inappropriate sexual behaviour, but most British press steered clear of the story.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I've known a few drunks in my time, not many were gropy cunts. Drunks who do grope are the same calibre as non drunks who grope. Using "I was drunk" as an excuse makes no fucking sense. Drunk or sober, Nick Cohen is always a cunt.

And even if you're drunk when you do it, a crime is still a crime.

 

[teqniq]

Archived version of the NYT article:

A British Reporter Had a Big #MeToo Scoop. Her Editor Killed It.

the omerta in the UK press is shameful

 

[Dystopiary]

Novara Media have an article up by Moya Lothian-McLean.

Two scandals are running parallel in British media. One is splashed across every tabloid, broadsheet and mainstream news channel: television presenter Phillip Schofield’s affair with a much younger man, who he apparently helped get a job on one of the country’s biggest breakfast shows. The other is the allegations of sexual misconduct levelled at Nick Cohen, a journalistic heavyweight who’s spent the last two decades writing for The Observer, among other titles.


Cohen is a big name, as well as formerly being shortlisted for the Orwell Prize – the UK’s most prestigious award for political journalism. And yet you’d be hard pressed to find much domestic coverage of the story at all.

(She does say "The accusations against him have been in the public domain since 2021" which, but there've been direct allegations on twitter about his behaviour for at least 10 years.)

The writer had his regular Observer column “paused” in 2022, before resigning “on health grounds” in January 2023, accompanied by glowing tributes from his editor. None of this was reported by any British title bar the Press Gazette, The National and The Telegraph, which claimed Cohen was forced out after a “trans rights row”.* There were none of the questions levelled at Guardian News & Media (GNM) that ITV – Schofield’s employers – face regarding an ostensibly consensual relationship between two adults (“unwise, but not illegal”, as Schofield put it), such as: what did management know? When exactly did they know it? How did they respond? What did their investigations find? What were the terms of departure?


Some of these questions now have partial answers, thanks solely to foreign press.

*The Telegraph have now published an article on the allegations, but the piece which Lothian-McLean references - and expecially its headline - were an absolute whitewash.

The headline for this is much more appropriate.

British Journalists Protect Noone But Themselves

 

[BusLanes]

It is interesting that the story has only made the DT

 

[Dystopiary]

There's an article in today's Independent, with the headline "Guardian accused of covering up sexual harassment by star columnist."

Lucy Siegle told the Independent that "it’s really shaken me to the foundations."

Ms Siegle said the “power differential” between herself and Mr Cohen had been significant and “really underplayed” in how the incident was handled.

In contemporaneous notes, Ms Siegle described an initial meeting as “a chaotic mess of defensiveness and attack” and likened it to “having a door shut in my face”.

“I was so crazy mad that this guy was positioning himself as a defender of women knowing what I knew about him,” Ms Siegle said. “The fact that Jolyon [Maugham] had written that, and he’s not even in the industry, made me know that [Mr Cohen] had ... done it again.”

Ms Siegle said there had been a wider reluctance by the media to expose wrongdoing in its own ranks. “I just think that there hasn’t been a #MediaToo story or any self-examination by the industry,” she said. “I hear on a daily basis from people who have been supressed or too frightened to speak out.

https://archive.ph/uYT4N

 

[Dystopiary]

Meanwhile,



Jolyon Maugham on twitter

 

[BusLanes]

The Guardian's chief editor and the ceo have apologised to Siegle

 

[Dystopiary]

Finally! Guardian News Media has apologised to "at least one woman."

Journalist Lucy Siegle has today recieved an apology from GNM for the sexual harassment she experienced by "an Observer member of staff" whilst at work, and "for the way [her] complaint was handled." Ms Siegle originally complained in 2018.

The Guardian’s editor in chief, Katharine Viner, and chief executive, Anna Bateson, wrote one of those women, Lucy Siegle, an email on Monday morning.

The company also told staff members that it was changing how it investigates sexual harassment complaints. The apology and the policy changes follow a New York Times investigation last month in which seven women said that Mr. Cohen had groped them or made other unwanted sexual advances over nearly two decades.

The Guardian has appointed a consulting firm, Howlett Brown, to act as an “independent point of contact until the end of September” for anyone wishing to report any current or historic issues or “raise any concerns about GNM’s policies or culture relating to sexual harassment. The company said that last year Howlett Brown found that overall, its policies were strong.

“I feel hugely relieved and a bit elated,” Ms. Siegle said. “It’s just a massive weight off my shoulders. I feel like I can move forward, which I haven’t been able to do for some time.”

NYT article (archived) by Jane Bradley

 

[BusLanes]

Finally! Guardian News Media has apologised to "at least one woman."

Journalist Lucy Cohen Siegle has today recieved an apology from GNM for the sexual harassment she experienced by "an Observer member of staff" whilst at work, and "for the way [her] complaint was handled." Ms Siegle originally complained in 2018.







NYT article (archived) by Jane Bradley

You may want to edit her surname from Cohen

 

[Dystopiary]

You may want to edit her surname from Cohen

Oops. Thanks.

 

[two sheds]

You may want to edit her surname from Cohen

You may want to edit her surname from Cohen