Guardian 'covered up' columnist's MeToo row

When the Left-wing commentator Nick Cohen left The Observer in November on “health grounds”, his bosses praised his “brilliant” and “incisive” journalism as they wished him the best for his future.

What they did not mention was that Mr Cohen left the newspaper with a settlement following complaints of sexual harassment that spanned a period of 17 years.

Guardian News and Media (GNM), which owns The Observer and The Guardian, has now been accused of a cover-up after seven women claimed they were harassed by him both inside and outside the workplace.

Some of his alleged victims have accused GNM of failing to act on complaints they made to managers over a period of years.

For his part, Mr Cohen has claimed that his downfall was the result of a bitter internal row over transgender rights that has opened a schism at the centre of The Guardian.

The fallout from the Cohen affair has also prompted recriminations at the Financial Times (FT), where an investigation by a prominent journalist into the goings-on at The Guardian was spiked by the business newspaper’s editor.

FT editor chose not to publish

The claim has been made by The New York Times (NYT), which reported that Madison Marriage, an FT journalist, had investigated the Cohen affair and had on the record interviews with two named women and documentary evidence on others, but Roula Khalaf, the FT’s editor, chose not to publish it.

Sources told the NYT that Ms Khalaf said Mr Cohen did not have a high enough profile in the business world to make him a story for the publication.

Both newspapers now risk allegations of hypocrisy after holding powerful men to account in their reporting of the MeToo movement.

The Guardian exposed allegations of sexual misconduct by Tim Westwood, a former radio DJ, in a joint investigation with BBC Three last year, and Ms Marriage won an award in 2018 for exposing the behaviour of the wealthy elite at men-only charity dinners known as The Presidents Club.

‘Groping her in the newsroom’

According to the NYT, which has spoken to several of the women allegedly targeted by Mr Cohen, The Guardian was less proactive when it came to investigating complaints against its own employees.

Lucy Siegle, a former journalist at The Guardian, told the NYT that she had made a complaint about Mr Cohen in 2018 for “groping her in the newsroom” in about 2001.

The NYT said Mr Cohen had grabbed her bottom, and that five other women had described similar encounters happening in pubs between 2008 and 2015. A seventh said that Mr Cohen had repeatedly offered to send her explicit photographs in 2018.

The NYT said Mr Cohen’s reputation was “widely known in the newsroom”, to the extent that some of his female colleagues used a different entrance to a pub near the office “to avoid being groped by him”.

Ms Siegle told the NYT that in February 2018, she reported Mr Cohen’s behaviour to Jan Thompson, The Guardian’s managing editor, describing how he had groped her as she stood at a photocopier not long after she started work at The Guardian as an editorial assistant in 2001.

She claimed that Ms Thompson responded by talking about the abuse Mr Cohen received for his political views. A week later, Ms Thompson reportedly emailed Ms Siegle to say she was “here if you want to discuss further”, which she declined to do.

The Guardian has said Ms Siegle decided not to pursue her complaint, but Ms Siegle claims an investigation was never offered.

Heather Brooke, a freelance investigative journalist, told the NYT that Mr Cohen had slapped her bottom at an awards ceremony in 2008. Rebecca Watson, a writer and commentator, said Mr Cohen had grabbed her bottom at a book party in 2009 and another freelance journalist who met Mr Cohen in a pub in 2010 to discuss her career said she “fled” after he suddenly kissed her on the mouth while clearly aroused.

Jean Hannah Edelstein, an assistant at The Observer from 2007 to 2009, said sexual harassment went beyond Mr Cohen, claiming that a member of staff “hit her with a sex whip as she walked by” and later suggested she should pose naked to promote her book.

‘I look back with shame’

The Guardian did eventually investigate Mr Cohen after Ms Siegle wrote about her experiences on Twitter in 2021. Ms Thompson reportedly wrote to her and said: “Given that you have now tweeted publicly I hope that it means that your position has now changed, and that you would be willing to provide further information so that we can investigate the matter fully.”

Mr Cohen was suspended and The Guardian hired a law firm to carry out an independent inquiry. He agreed a deal to leave quietly rather than being sacked.

According to the NYT, he had a confidentiality agreement with GNM and was given a pay-off, something that GNM failed to deny when contacted by The Telegraph.

Mr Cohen told the NYT that he had agreed to the deal after considering the financial implications for his family.

Last summer, The Telegraph disclosed that Mr Cohen’s suspension from The Observer came in the wake of a row over trans rights with Jolyon Maugham, a campaigning lawyer. Mr Maugham, who represents Ms Siegle, appealed for other women with complaints against Mr Cohen to come forward.

When Mr Cohen was first contacted by the NYT, he questioned why Ms Siegle had taken 17 years to make a complaint against him, and said he had been the victim of a campaign by his critics, including transgender rights advocates.

Mr Cohen told The Telegraph: “On doctors’ advice I took sick leave from The Observer in the summer of 2022. I resigned on health grounds later in the year.”

He added: “I am afraid to say that in the early 2000s, I was an alcoholic. After three years of trying, I went clean in 2016. Today, I look back on my addicted life with deep shame and enormous regret.”

‘Atmosphere of real fear’

In recent years, GNM has been riven by internal disagreements over its stance on transgender issues, with columnist Suzanne Moore claiming she was bullied out of the organisation by staff who accused her of being transphobic, and fellow columnist Hadley Freeman quitting after saying she was banned from interviewing gender-critical feminists.

Ms Freeman said an “atmosphere of real fear” had developed at The Guardian over the issue, and in her resignation letter to Kath Viner, The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, she accused the paper of giving in to the trans lobby.

The NYT said that Mr Cohen said of the seven women’s claims: “I assume it’s stuff I was doing when I was drunk.”

A GNM spokesman said: “None of the incidents The New York Times reports were raised with GNM senior management until one serious allegation was raised confidentially with a member of GNM senior management in 2018. However, the victim asked to remain anonymous and did not wish to pursue the complaint.

“When further details of this and another complaint were later made public on social media in 2021 and 2022, we instigated our own HR investigations, although neither complainant wished to take part.”

An FT spokesman said: “We were dismayed by today’s article in the NYT. The FT has a strong reputation for exposing abuse of power and harassment, as a slew of recent reports and investigations – some referenced in the article – demonstrate. Not all filed pieces meet the rigorous standards of the FT and/or move a story along significantly. These judgments are made daily by the editor and her team and never lightly.”