When, two years ago, the BBC broadcast a documentary and published an article detailing allegations of sexual misconduct, misogyny and workplace bullying against PinkNews founder Benjamin Cohen and his husband, it provoked a scandal.
The documentary, PinkNews: Behind Closed Doors, with its lurid allegations of the firm’s allegedly boozy workplace culture, sparked widespread debate on social media and within media circles, and even a spokesperson for then prime minister Keir Starmer said the claims were “very concerning”.
All the more damning, then, that two years on the allegations have turned out to be… completely untrue!
The corporation has been forced to apologise and faces paying hefty damages after reaching a settlement with Cohen and husband Anthony James following legal action at the High Court of Justice. The BBC’s lawyers said it “accepts everything” and “retracts and apologises unreservedly for the defamatory allegations made in the programme and the article”.
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The documentary was accompanied by an article titled “PinkNews bosses accused of sexual misconduct”, saying that the BBC had spoken with 30 current and former employees, some of whom claimed they had experienced bullying and sexual misconduct from the pair. The BBC also reported that several people had said some young female members of staff had been asked to act as the couple’s surrogates.
Now, though, the BBC has agreed to pay them compensation. In a joint settlement statement read out at the High Court, Cohen and James said the BBC had “reinforced one of the most damaging homophobic tropes” by “falsely portraying us as engaging in sexual misconduct and pressuring female employees over surrogacy”.
The High Court statement called the allegations “serious, false, defamatory… and extremely harmful to the claimants’ reputations.” It added that, as a result of the documentary, Cohen and James had been made subject to additional investigations by CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) ahead of a parental order hearing at the Family Court in respect of their son, who had been born via surrogate.
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Cohen and James told PinkNews the case should raise wider questions about editorial standards and accountability at the BBC.
“The BBC’s authority makes mistakes like this more dangerous, not less,” they said. “When one of the world’s biggest news organisations tells millions of people something is true, those people understandably expect it to have done the work necessary to stand behind what it broadcasts. In our case, it hadn’t.”
A BBC spokeswoman would only say: “The BBC has reached a settlement with Ben Cohen and Anthony James. We will not be issuing any further comment.” The article has now vanished from its site (the documentary is no longer on iPlayer, although its removal may just be because of the usual time period for expiry).
Will the case of PinkNews be followed by the Orange Man in the White House? Donald Trump is still pursuing his $10 billion libel case against the BBC over the editing of a Panorama documentary about the US Capitol riots. While Cohen and James are donating their damages to the Multiple Sclerosis Society and Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Charity, Trump probably won’t.
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