The Nauseating Hypocrisy of The Guardian as Julian Assange is Freed

It was Guardian ‘journalists’ who, from the safety of their expense accounts, sneered & jeered whilst intelligence asset Luke Harding invented lies aimed at keeping Assange locked up

Assange & the Guardian  - How a 'liberal' newspaper jeopardised journalistic freedom

Last Tuesday Julian Assange was freed after 12 years of wrongful imprisonment after agreeing a ‘plea deal’ with the US government over espionage charges when the only significant US witness admitted under oath that he had been lying the whole time.

When Assange was set free from Belmarsh for the ‘crime’ of having revealed American war crimes, I wondered what angle I should take. I decided that Guardian hypocrisy was a good approach after I read The Guardian view on the WikiLeaks plea deal: good for Julian Assange, not journalism. If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue then Editor Katherine Viner must have overdosed on the stuff.

At last Julian Assange is Free

I then came across Jonathan Cook’s excellent It was the media, led by the Guardian, that kept Julian Assange behind bars.

Cook wrote about how David Leigh and Luke Harding, who worked with Assange on behalf of the Guardian, had become extremely hostile to him for not agreeing to their writing his. Instead they 

‘repeatedly betrayed confidences and manoeuvred against Wikileaks rather the cooperating with it. Assange was particularly incensed to discover that the paper had broken the terms of its written contract with Wikileaks by secretly sharing confidential documents with outsiders, including the NYT.

When lawyers for the US yet again quote from a book by the Guardian's David Leigh in a desperate bid to bolster their flimsy case against Julian Assange, investigative journalist Nicky Hager replies: 'I would not regard that [book] as a reliable source' https://t.co/uPk8wVX5RF

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 20, 2020

In giving evidence at the Old Bailey, a senior investigative journalist, Nicky Hager, described the pair’s 2011 book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy as “not a reliable source”. Hostility to Asssange extended to virtually all the Guardian’s ‘journalists’.

Deepa Driver interview with BBC on Assange’s Release

It was Luke Harding and Dan Collyns who wrote the article Manafort held secret talks with Assange (Guardian 27.11.18). This was a fabrication, planted by the intelligence services which alleged that Assange was in league with Donald Trump. Manafort had been Trump’s campaign manager. No evidence was provided for the allegation that they had had 3 visits. The security cameras didn’t catch sight of Manafort and the Embassy visitors’ book was not signed by him. This was Harding’s revenge, courtesy of MI5/6.

Assange's lawyers are noting the long-known fact that Guardian journalists made the unredacted cables accessible through incompetence – they published the file's password. The point is: If anyone should be in the dock (and no one should be!), it would be the Guardian, not Assange https://t.co/4fQlUEXLTP

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 25, 2020

At the centre of the US case against Assange was information in Leigh and Harding’s book that ‘Assange was recklessly indifferent to the safety of US informants named in leaked files published by Wikileaks.’ In fact this was the opposite of the truth.

‘Assange was meticulous about redacting names in the documents. It was they – the journalists, including Leigh – who were pressuring Assange to publish without taking full precautions....

But to bolster its feeble claim against Assange – that he was reckless about redactions – the US has hoped to demonstrate that in September 2011, long after publication of the Iraq and Afghan diaries, Wikileaks did indeed release a trove of documents – official US cables – that Assange failed to redact....

In fact, the story behind the September 2011 release by Wikileaks of those unredacted documents is entirely different from the story the court and public is being told. The Guardian has conspired in keeping quiet about the real version of events for one simple reason – because it, the Guardian, was the cause of that release.

The February 2011 Guardian book the US keeps citing contained something in addition to the highly contentious and disputed claim from Leigh that Assange had a reckless attitude to redacting names. The book also disclosed a password – one Assange had given to Leigh on strict conditions it be kept secret – to the file containing the 250,000 encrypted cables. The Guardian book let the cat out of the bag. Once it gave away Assange’s password, the Old Bailey hearings have heard, there was no going back.

Demonstration Outside the Guardian's Offices 2020

It is this that explains why, for over a decade Guardian’s writers and columnists have attacked the very person who the Guardian had teamed up with, to produce its scoops. Instead of campaigning against the extradition proceedings against Assange the Guardian kept quiet. ‘Left’ journalists like George Monbiot refused to cover the case. In 2020 we held a demonstration outside the Guardian’s offices near King’s Cross to protest at its silence during the extradition hearings.

It is therefore a chutzpah (defined as when a boy who has killed both his parents asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan!) when, after Assange’s release, in its leading article the Guardian wrote that

‘Julian Assange should never have been charged with espionage by the US. The release of the WikiLeaks founder from custody in the UK is good news... This is no triumph for press freedom. Mr Assange’s plea has prevented the setting of a frightening judicial precedent for journalists, avoiding a decision that might bind future courts. Nonetheless, this is the first conviction for basic journalistic efforts under the 1917 act.

Using espionage charges was always a bad and cynical move. ... Alarmingly, the Espionage Act allows no public interest defence, preventing defendants from discussing the material leaked, why they shared it, and why they believe the public should know about it. ... It is possible that future administrations could take this case as encouragement to pursue the press under the Espionage Act. ... The political solution to this lengthy saga is welcome, ... But the threat to press freedom has not ended. Its defence cannot rest either.

That Assange has finally gained his freedom is no thanks to the Guardian which lied and deceived throughout his 14 year ordeal.

Just a few of the poisonous articles in the Guardian - all based on trivial, malicious and unfounded allegations

The stench of hypocrisy emanating from the Guardian’s offices is overwhelming. The Guardian, which benefitted from scoop after scoop after scoop after scoop after scoop as a result of Wikileaks revelations, turned on the person who enabled those front page stories, with a tale of treachery and deceit that would put Judas to shame.

Deepa Driver Speaks on the Injustices of our ‘Justice System’ vs Julian Assange

But when the United States and its masters of the dark arts hit on the idea of framing Assange for rape in Sweden, knowing full well that such an allegation would inevitably cause people to question whether they should be supporting him, the Guardian and the rest of the liberal rat pack ran as fast as their little legs could carry them.

Unlike liberals and identity politics feminists, the Deep State is not stupid. It knows very well how to sow the seeds of division among its opponents. Sexual crimes and #metoo rank highest of all in the list of accusations to wreak havoc in the ranks of Assange’s supporters.

The same has happened over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  Israeli propagandists have worked hard to conjure up tales of ‘rape’ by the Palestinian resistance despite a total lack of evidence. The weaponisation of rape has a long history and Black and Jewish people have both been its victims as they were portrayed as sexual predators in the Deep South and Nazi Germany. The case of the Scottsboro Boys, 9 Blacks who were falsely accused of rape and nearly executed in Alabama, stands out as an example of racialised lynch mob justice.

Nils Melzer, the UN Rapporteur, in The Trial of Julian Assange demolished the accusations of rape showing that it was the Police and a corrupt Swedish prosecutor who formulated these charges despite a lack of evidence. The women concerned hadn’t made allegations of rape. That was the Swedish state on behalf of the United States.

The Guardian was assiduous in playing up the rape allegations. In February 2016, in response to a UN Report that Assange was the victim of arbitrary detention, the Guardian published a leading article  Julian Assange: no victim of arbitrary detention. It said:

It is true that he has never been charged, as his lawyers have argued. But that is because Swedish legal procedure requires an interview to take place before any decision to prosecute: since Mr Assange left Sweden in 2010 before he could be questioned and has resolutely refused to return, no such interview has taken place.

But that was a lie. As Nils Melzer pointed out, Assange delayed his departure from Sweden in order that prosecutors could question him. They refused to do so. He had already been questioned by police. The Guardian and its contributors made a special effort to run with the rape allegations in order to cover up its own malfeasance.

But that did not stop feminists and liberals using these accusations to target Assange on behalf of US imperialism. The Guardian’s ‘journalists’, not least its female journalists, were the worst.

Marina Hyde, the Guardian’s empty head, was the nastiest and snidest of the lot. Hadley Freeman, on loan from the Jewish Chronicle, penned a puerile attempt at wit. Suzanna Moore a poisonous transphobe and Hanna Jane Parkinson joined in the baying mob.

The Guardian’s male ‘journalists’ lacked the viciousness and bitchiness of their female colleagues but they made up for it. None more so than Nick Cohen, whose years of sexual abuse, was covered up by Jonathan Freedland and other senior editors.

Cohen’s abuse was the subject of an article in the NYT. The Guardian prided itself on #metoo but when it came to it, it too covered up gross and persistent sexual assault bordering on rape. As Martha Gill put it in the Observer #MeToo men want to be forgiven, but what of the careers of their casualties? I’m sure all the young journalists who were forced to give up internships or jobs at the Guardian because of Cohen have been handsomely compensated-not.

None of this prevented Cohen from attacking Assange though!

Some of Assange's supporters say that the women have no right to put allegations of sexual abuse before a competent court. Instead, they denounce them as "feminazis" in language so extreme that the women's lawyer said his clients were "the victims of a crime, but they are looked upon as the perpetrators". ...  Activists, who claim they are the enemies of patriarchy, dismiss allegations of sexual abuse as a CIA conspiracy.

Cohen wasn’t the only righteous hypocrite on the Guardian. Marina Hyde was convinced that Assange was ‘a man hiding in an embassy to avoid a rape investigation’. Nothing to do with the CIA wanting to bump him off. The talentless Hyde had an obsession with Assange, remarking in another turgid article that ‘the higher he has gone in his “quest for justice”, the smaller he has looked.’

But when it comes to getting it badly wrong, no one was quite as skilled as Cohen. In another paranoid article Cohen wrote that:

Greenwald and the rest of Assange's supporters do not tell us how the Americans could prosecute the incontinent leaker. American democracy is guilty of many crimes and corruptions. But the First Amendment to the US constitution is the finest defence of freedom of speech yet written. The American Civil Liberties Union thinks it would be unconstitutional for a judge to punish Assange.

And yet Assange was prosecuted. Under the Espionage Act. The Americans were determined to exclude his protections under that same First Amendment (because he wasn’t a citizen). Cohen to be fair was not the only one to get it wrong. James Ball, wrote in 2018 that

The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride. The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon

David Crouch attacked Assange over breach of privacy with an article about how he had defied Swedish prosecutors by releasing a statement. Having been interviewed by Sweden’s prosecutors Assange was perfectly entitled to release his version of events.

In 2019 Jessica Elgot, another transfer from the Jewish Chronicle reported on a letter from MPs that urged that priority be given to rape claims that were by then dead. Quite conveniently that saved them from defending someone who had revealed the US’s dirty secrets.

None of these people have apologised for their squalid attacks, despite having got it wrong about the US intention to extradite Assange. If the Guardian had any principles it would have fired the lot. As I said on the demonstration outside the Guardian, it had only one good journalist, its cartoonist Steve Bell, and he was fired!

Declassified Clip on Starmer's Role When at the CPS on the Framing of Julian Assange

All of this pales in comparison with Starmer’s role as head of the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS urged the Swedes not to drop their extradition request when the lack of evidence was plain.  ‘Don’t you dare get fold feet’ was the message sent by the CPS to them.

The CPS has admitted to destroying key emails related to the Assange case, mostly covering the period when Starmer was in charge, while the CPS lawyer overseeing the case advised the Swedes in 2010 or 2011 not to visit London to interview Assange.

Now is a good time to remember that when Starmer was (a deeply unpopular) Director of Public Prosecutions and Assange was fighting attempts to extradite him to Sweden, as a staging post for extradition to the US, Starmer flew at least three times to the US in connection with the Assange case. He was accompanied by security officials. The CPS destroyed all records of Starmer’s discussions – as it did with records showing what he knew about serial rapist Jimmy Savile:

This was not Starmer’s only example of grovelling to the US on extradition. When the US wanted autistic hacker Gary McKinnon after he had hacked its servers looking for information on UFOs, Starmer told the Americans he would ‘do everything’ to ensure the extradition went ahead – and flew in fury to bow and scrape to Washington after the then Home Secretary Theresa May quashed it.

Starmer has been described as a ‘long-time servant of the British security state’ and has relentlessly backed moves to protect state agents from crimes such as rape and murder. He attacked environmental and human rights protesters, supported immunity for soldiers who murdered civilians in Northern Ireland and refused to oppose laws allowing the state to persecute journalists. Not once did he speak out against the relentless US pursuit of Assange, despite the collapse of the US case when its main witness admitted lying.

If Starmer is elected as Prime Minister we can expect a continuation of the Tory policy of criminalising protest. There isn’t a piece of paper between him and the Tories. See Video: Starmer met US agencies about Assange extradition – CPS destroyed all records

An important article in the London Review of Books by Patrick Cockburn, one of the few genuine journalists left, described how:

Melzer describes an investigation that was politicised from the moment on 20 August 2010 when two women, then known only as AA and SW, went to a police station in Stockholm ‘to inquire whether Mr Assange could be compelled to take an HIV test’. Within hours, ‘the Swedish prosecution ordered the arrest of Mr Assange and informed the tabloid newspaper Expressen that he was suspected of having raped two women.’

Over the next nine years, as the investigation was repeatedly closed by one prosecutor only to be reopened by another, Sweden regularly indicated that it wanted to question Assange, but in practice showed little desire to do so or to bring the investigation to a conclusion. The main effect of the stop-go judicial proceedings was to keep the controversy over what Assange did in Stockholm in 2010 on the boil. The Swedish government finally replied to Melzer’s letter in November only to say that it had ‘no further observation to make’; the following day the investigation was formally closed.

None of this is likely to change the way Assange is seen. In keeping with past experience, almost no mainstream news outlet paid any attention to Melzer’s questions about the conduct of the case. The world’s biggest newspapers, which had published the WikiLeaks disclosures on their front pages in 2010, distanced themselves from Assange very shortly afterwards, often declaring that he was a difficult person to deal with or was slapdash in his handling of the US government cables and reports. He was accused of being a ‘narcissist’, as if that were something more than a character flaw, or as if his character flaws – whatever they were – had any bearing on the information that had been revealed.

Given the gravity of the issues at stake, the silence of journalists about Assange’s detention in Belmarsh following Ecuador’s revoking of his asylum status is striking. Here was evidence of a radical shift in US security policy, towards the position taken by countries like Turkey and Egypt, which have sought to criminalise criticism of the state and to conflate the publication of news it doesn’t want the public to hear with terrorism or espionage. ... as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out in the Intercept, Western media have ‘largely ignored what is, by far, the single greatest attack on press freedoms by the US government in the last decade at least: the prosecution and attempted extradition of Julian Assange for alleged crimes arising out of WikiLeaks’s ... publication – in conjunction with the world’s largest newspapers – of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and US diplomatic cables’. They couldn’t jail the editor of the New York Times so they pursued Assange instead.

The fact that Assange has evaded charges of sexual violence and skipped bail should be opposed by the Labour Party. I'm sure it is, I'd like to hear it. https://t.co/17vv19pNA7

— Jess Phillips (@jessphillips) April 11, 2019

 

Tribute needs to be paid to Stella Assange, who I had the privilege of meeting during the Future of the Left events at the 2022 Labour Party conference in Liverpool where I spoke. Stella has been a dogged campaigner. John Pilger was a staunch supporter as was Yanis Varoufakis but with very few exceptions Labour MPs like Jess Philips, who ran with the rape allegations, have been silent or hostile.

I have a few observations. The thrust of the US charges related to Wikileaks having endangered their agents and operatives. Although Assange took care not to reveal their names I have to confess that I couldn’t care less what happened to them. I remember when ex-CIA agent Phil Agee, deliberately went out of his way to expose them in his book Inside the Company, which is still a good read. Agee was deported by Home Secretary Merlyn Rees in 1977

The CIA has been responsible, through the coups it has engineered in Chile, Indonesia, Iran etc. for the deaths of over a million people in Indonesia alone. If there are a few less CIA thugs roaming the streets then that makes far more people safe. US foreign policy is designed to make all except the elites unsafe.

I also want to comment on the judicial proceedings. Yet again our judges, who never let it be forgot are the 'most socially exclusive groups of all the professions’ according to the report, Elitist Britain by the Social Mobility Commission and the Sutton Trust. It shows that 65% of senior judges were educated at an independent school & 75% attended Oxford or Cambridge. [Law Gazette, 25.6.19.]

The inquities in this case are staggering. There is firstly the conflict of interests. The Westminster Chief Magistrate Lady Emma Arbuthnot who made key rulings against Assange is married to Lord James Arbuthnot, a former Defence Minister and Chair of the Defence Select Committee. Arbuthnot was also an advisor to the Islamaphobic Henry Jackson Society.

The Lord Chief Justice who was responsible for rejecting Assange’s first appeal, Ian Burnett, was a long-standing friend of Alan Duncan, the Minister at the Foreign Office who was responsible for the campaign against Ecuador for  harbouring Assange. He later described Assange in parliament as a ‘miserable worm’.

But it’s not just these obvious conflicts of interest. Running through these proceedings is the assumption that the United States has the right to prosecute non-citizens for ‘offences’ committed outside its territorial jurisdiction. Of course in reality the evil empire considers that its reach extends everywhere but at no point did this point even enter the heads of the judiciary.

Secondly Article 4 of the Extradition Treaty of 2007 between the US and Britain explicitly excludes political offences. It reads:

Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense.

 However  the judges are well paid to ensure that their duty to the security state always outweighs their duty to justice and naturally they found a form of weasel words to get around this.

It might be thought that revealing details of war crimes committed by the United States was in itself a compelling reason for rejecting the extradition request however that would be to underestimate the morality of Britain’s judiciary. Crimes by the state are never crimes unless there is a political advantage to making them so. The fact that committing war crimes is illegal under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 is no bar to making revelation of them an offence.

Then there is the small matter of the CIA listening in to privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers. The judges didn’t rule on this they simply ignored it altogether.

Then there was the attempt of the CIA to assassinate Assange. Naturally the judges didn’t think this had any bearing on the extradition proceedings. After all that’s the CIA’s job. So how can one party trying to kill another be of any relevance? 

So all in all Britain’s judiciary completely disgraced themselves but that too is not the first time.

We can thank Australia’s electorate that they turfed out the previous administration under Scott Morrison and elected a Labour government under Anthony Albanese that campaigned vociferously for Assange’s release. Whatever the sins of the Australian Labour Party, and they are many, one can be thankful that Albanese is not Keir Starmer otherwise Assange would still be in Belmarsh.

Tony Greenstein 

#MeToo & #Guardian Hypocrisy - Why did the Guardian Protect Nick Cohen, who for 20 years Sexually Abused Young Female Journalists?

How does Kath Viner & Jonathan Freedland Square #MeToo with paying off Cohen and Penalising the Victims?

#MeToo in the media Good Law Project

As the old saying goes, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue and The Guardian’s hypocrisy is indeed a vice.

If there was an award for the most rabidly racist, war-mongering, anti-Corbyn ‘journalist’ the name of Nick Cohen would come high if not top of the list. Despite his name he isn’t Jewish though he began to claim that too with an article ‘Hatred is turning me into a Jew’.

Seven years later, as the anti-Corbyn campaign was getting going, Cohen penned an article Why I’m becoming a Jew and why you should, too. Clearly his conversion was taking a long time!

 ‘My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew. Despite being called “Cohen”, I’ve never been Jewish before.

An open invitation from Nick Cohen for every racist troll to convert to Judaism

When anti-Semitism was a genuine form of racism, Jews were identified with the left and trade unionism. Zionism has managed to transform Jews into an object of admiration for the racist right.

Back in the early years of New Labour Cohen was a decent journalist, writing a weekly column on the back page of the Observer. His politics were Tribunite. He consistently attacked New Labour’s policies towards refugees. He even opposed the Blair government’s introduction of Holocaust Memorial Day.

My email to Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian's Zionist Gatekeeper Goes Unanswered

Then 9/11 happened and with it the War on Terror. Cohen jack-knifed to the right, becoming an Islamaphobe and a supporter of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Thus was born the anti-Corbyn fiend and sexual predator that Freedland and Viner did their best to protect.

My favourite Cohen article is Don’t tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn which he wrote just before Theresa May called a general election in April 2017. This latter-day Nostradamus predicted that:

On current polling, Labour will get around a quarter of the vote. Imagine, though, how the Labour party will fare in an election campaign when its leaders are Corbyn, John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott… The Tories have gone easy on Corbyn and his comrades to date for the transparently obvious reason that they want to keep them in charge of Labour.

In an election, they would tear them to pieces. They will expose the far left’s record of excusing the imperialism of Vladimir Putin’s gangster state, the oppressors of women and murderers of gays in Iran, the IRA, and every variety of inquisitorial and homicidal Islamist movement… Will there be 150, 125, 100 Labour MPs by the end of the flaying? My advice is to think of a number then halve it.

Cohen’s final paragraph to those supporting Corbyn was:

In my respectful opinion, your only honourable response will be to stop being a fucking fool by changing your fucking mind.

It is such sentiments that make Cohen an object of admiration for Hadley Freeman, Tanya Gold and all the other journalistic detritus.

This blog was alone in predicting Corbyn's unexpected success in 2017

In the wake of the June 2017 election, when Labour – despite the sabotage of the right - gained 30 seats and the highest swing since 1945 – I wrote a blog Jeremy Corbyn and the Humiliation of Nick Cohen. Almost alone amongst commentators I predicted the outcome. With the polls showing a lead of over 20% I wrote:

… it was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics. Seven weeks is a political eternity. Theresa May has taken a gamble that her 21% lead will hold. It is a gamble that she may yet come to regret.

There is only one direction that her lead can go, and that is down. Once her lead falls, then a snowball effect can take over. What is essential is that Labour marks out the key areas on which it is going to base its appeal. The danger is that Corbyn is going to continue with his ‘strategy’ of appeasing the right and appealing to all good men and women....

Theresa May is a cautious conservative. She is literally the product of her background - a conservative vicar’s daughter. Reactionary, parochial and small-minded, she is a bigot for all seasons.

On 3 June I wrote General Election - Is Labour on the threshold of victory? After the result I wrote to Kath Viner, offering to replace Nick Cohen at half his salary. For reasons which remain difficult to understand to this day Viner ignored my generous offer!

Nick Cohen Leaves The Guardian for ‘Health Reasons’

In January 2023 Cohen left The Guardian. According to The Telegraph Guardian News and Media (GNM)

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

The Guardian said that Cohen’s departure was for ‘health’ reasons whereas the real reason was that he had had been a sexual predator, preying on young female journalists, some with mental health problems, others on temporary contracts.

The Guardian’s deception was only successful because other newspapers colluded with them. [See Nick Cohen, Phillip Schofield and British media’s own #MeToo reckoning, The Week, 1.6.23].

Kath Viner got rid of its cartoonist of 40 years standing, Steve Bell, the only decent journalist left on the paper - Viner ruled that the appearance of Razan Al Najar - the 21 year old Palestinian medic killed by Netanyahu's snipers in Gaza, in Theresa May's fireplace was 'antisemitic'

My email to Guardian editor Kath Viner also goes unanswered

In a puff to gullible readers who are asked to fund Kath Viner’s half a million pound salary, The Guardian commits itself to delivering

fearless, investigative journalism – giving a voice to the powerless and holding power to account.”

Novara Media on Nick Cohen cover up

Except, it seems, when the powerless happen to be young, female journalists in its newsroom.

The Guardian Investigates Cohen or Does It?

In January 2018 Lucy Siegle reported Cohen for groping her. Siegle started at The Guardian around 2001 as an editorial assistant. She described standing at a photocopier when Cohen appeared behind her, cupped her bottom with both hands, grunted and breathed heavily into her ear.

Siegle remembers returning to her desk, humiliated. She never considered reporting him. “I’m literally the least powerful person in the entire newsroom.”. For 14 years she avoided his desk and chaperoned interns “like a mother hen crossing a busy road.”

The #MeToo movement was sweeping through society on Feb. 1, 2018, when Siegle met with Guardian Managing Editor Jan Thompson. Siegle described what happened next.

The meeting began with me. I described why I was there, and went on to tell the senior executive about Nick Cohen’s assault on me. There was not much response at this point, just a blank stare which I felt to be slightly hostile. But when I mentioned that I was aware there had been another allegation, the senior executive became animated.

They set me straight (“That sort of Twitter allegation would not be investigated in that way ever…”) and pulled a face of disgust at the very idea of that allegation. The executive also denied any knowledge about any allegation.

The meeting continued and the exec pointed out a number of times that it would be difficult for me to proceed with my complaint anonymously and made it sound as if I will have to go head-to-head with “Nick”. He was called by his first name throughout, and there was lengthy speculation from the exec about what he might say and how he might be affected by such an allegation.

The main concern of Thompson was about the possibility that Siegle would write about what happened. Thompson’s main concern was the alleged abuse that Cohen faced for his political views, according to notes Siegle wrote afterward. She described the meeting as a “chaotic mess of defensiveness and attack.”

The exec then told me that Nick Cohen was frequently targeted for abuse because of his political standpoint. They sounded like they were defending a very precious asset, their star striker. I could not understand why this was remotely relevant, but my brain began to compute that this conversation was not welcome….

By the time the meeting finished, I felt like I had been in a laundry cycle, but also a bit like I’d been beaten up. As happens with these things, you pore over them afterwards to make sure that you haven’t been over-sensitive or misread.

Because of this hostile reaction, Siegle decided not to pursue the complaint within GNM.

You might think The Guardian’s response was strange given that in its Leader The Guardian view on #MeToo: what comes next? they wrote:

No woman should suffer socially, economically or professionally for challenging her abuser. But how much harder it is to speak out when the cost may be not only your career, but the ability to pay the rent or feed your children. And how much more likely you are to be targeted when predatory men know that...

Even now, women are paying a price for speaking out. Much discussion has skipped past the primary question – how women should be treated in the workplace – to fixate on how perpetrators should be treated, without pausing to acknowledge the penalties that victims have already paid.

The Guardian was keen to hear from victims of sexual harassment everywhere but the Guardian!

One week before Siegle’s complaint The Guardian solicited tips about workplace sexual harassment. They said:

We take all allegations of workplace harassment extremely seriously and aim to support victims in all circumstances. We have processes which anyone can use to raise complaints so that they can be fully investigated.

Siegle wrote of how she was aware of several other women who had also been “discouraged” by The Guardian from taking forward their complaints.

New York Times Breaks the story that the British press, including Private Eye, Wouldn’t Touch

On 30 May the New York Times [NYT] ran British Reporter Had a Big #MeToo Scoop. Her Editor Killed It about what had happened at The Guardian and the Financial Times [FT]. It spoke of 7 women who had made allegations against Cohen but no paper would touch it because ‘Britain’s news media has a complicated relationship with outing its own.’

Lucy Siegle is one of multiple women to accuse the British columnist Nick Cohen of unwanted sexual advances and groping.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

The NYT revealed that FT journalist Madison Marriage secured a “potentially explosive scoop” on the real reason behind Cohen’s departure but her story was spiked by Editor Roula Khalaf. Marriage had evidence that his departure followed years of unwanted sexual advances and groping of female journalists.

The FT’s explanation was that “Some reporting leads to published stories and some not.”

Jane Bradley interviewed more than 35 journalists at The Guardian and FT to examine sexual misconduct in Britain’s news media.

Marriage had already begun investigating Cohen but Roula Khalaf halted the investigation, telling Marriage not to contact any new sources. Her team had already interviewed five of Cohen’s accusers.

Two women were willing to speak openly, and Marriage had supporting documentation on others. Khalaf said that Cohen did not have a big enough business profile to make him an “F.T. story”. Publicly, the FT had declared “no topic or scandal off limits.”

In February Khalaf said she would not run the investigation as a news article, several journalists recalled, and suggested that Marriage file it as an opinion piece. She did, but it still did not run.

The Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf during an appearance last year on the BBC. Credit...James Manning/PA Images, via Getty Images

A native of Lebanon, Khalaf is not a British media insider. Colleagues described her as a cautious editor, and some said the Cohen article had fallen victim to an institutional conflict between the newspaper’s investigative aspirations and its conservative, business roots.

The spiking of the FT article hit Siegle especially hard. ‘Now it seemed the whole industry was protecting itself.’ She described how the response to the story showed

“#MeToo is nothing but a convenient hashtag for the British media. The silence on its own industry is just really conspicuous.”

Cohen was seen as someone with influence, former colleagues said. Credit...Marco Secchi/Getty Images

Cohen however was unrepentant. He told the NYT that it wasn’t the women he abused who were the victims: He was the “only person whose life is turned over because of this”. 

A GNM spokesperson told The Telegraph that the organisation “instigated our own HR investigations” in 2018, but the group said the victim “did not wish to pursue the complaint”. Siegle asked

If Britain’s most stridently liberal newspaper fails to deal with claims of sexual harassment by one of its leading writers, what does it say about the supposed progress of the #MeToo movement

On October 6 2021 Siegle posted on Twitter describing her experience at The Guardian.

“I don’t normally read Nick Cohen’s column in the Observer. Ever since he ‘groped’ me at the photocopier (zero marks for originality) at work when I was an admin assistant in my early 20s I have avoided being anywhere near him. But I do think he is a total creep…. lurking in the shadows to lay your hands on an underling (or anyone) is not to my mind compatible with the position he presents.”

It was through going public that she heard from other victims of Cohen, as did the Good Law Project [GLP]. The experiences of Women 1-5, as the GLP refers to the complainants (Siegle is W2) featured in a thread posted by Jolyon Maugham. Many more have come forward since.

GNM turned down a request for an independent inquiry into its complaint processes and handling of the complaints. Siegle told how

Nick Cohen is now co-operating with GNM on an investigation and his column has been “paused”. He has previously denied allegations as “vile and untrue”. I am sure that if Jolyon, myself, and the other Ws had not pushed and posted threads it would still be business as usual in Guardian HQ.

On 4 August 2022 Siegle wrote, not in The Guardian but the New European that

It was during this time as an admin assistant that I was assaulted by Nick Cohen, a prominent and highly-regarded journalist and, until this week when his column was “paused” as he is investigated by the company, still a star columnist on The Observer, as well as other publications including The Spectator and Private Eye.

Cohen spent two decades as a columnist for The Observer. ‘Inside the newsroom, he was seen as influential, colleagues said, someone who could help your career.’

His resignation in January cited “health grounds.” Secretly, the newspaper group paid him a financial settlement for quitting and agreed to confidentiality, according to three colleagues and an editor with whom Mr. Cohen spoke.

This cartoon was also deemed 'antisemitic' by Freedland's witchhunters

In his farewell, editors praised his “brilliant” and “incisive” coverage. Seven women told the NYT that Cohen had groped them or made other unwanted sexual advances over nearly two decades. Four insisted on anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.

Siegle recounted Cohen grabbing her bottom in the newsroom around 2001. Five other women described similar encounters at pubs from 2008 to 2015. One said Mr. Cohen had pressed his erection against her thigh and kissed her uninvited when they met to discuss her career. A seventh said Mr. Cohen had repeatedly offered to send her explicit photographs in 2018 while she worked as an unpaid copy editor for him.

This cartoon too was deemed 'antisemitic' by Freedland's witchhunters

Cohen’s reputation was widely known in the newsroom, according to 10 former colleagues. Five women said he had groped them after work at pubs, including one who said he had groped her “five or six” times in 2008. One said she and other female journalists had used a different entrance to a pub to avoid being groped by him. Another woman said she had avoided the bar downstairs from the newsroom after Mr. Cohen grabbed her knee during work drinks.

Private Eye too did not cover his departure. When a reader emailed asking why, Editor Ian Hislop replied:

“Coverage of Nick Cohen’s departure from The Observer is obviously more problematic for The Eye than the others that you mention due to the fact that he used to write a freelance column for the magazine.”

Hislop said he had discussed the terms of The Guardian’s deal with Cohen. “Instead of any conclusion,” Hislop said of The Guardian investigation, “it ended up with a secret agreement and a big cash payment.”

In the end the ratbiter was bitten where it hurts most but Ian Hislop joined the Street of Shame in not telling the Eye's readers why

Cohen’s column in Private Eye was called Ratbiter, which regularly defamed Corbyn supporters including Greg Hadfield and myself. It was a litany of lies but Private Eye supported Cohen’s false ‘anti-Semitism’ accusations. Cohen’s departure from the Eye was mentioned only in The Press Gazette, a media trade website.

In a phone interview with the NYT, Cohen said he did not have the “faintest idea” about Siegle’s accusation and questioned why she had waited so long to report it. He said the conversation with the copy editor was “joking” among friends. He blamed the accusations on a campaign by supporters of Russia and transgender rights!

Steve Bell - the only honest journalist on the Guardian was sacked by Kath Viner

Informed that seven women had complained Cohen exclaimed, “Oh, God. I assume it’s stuff I was doing when I was drunk”. In a subsequent email, Cohen did not respond to specific accusations.

“I have written at length about my alcoholism. I went clean seven years ago in 2016. I look back on my addicted life with deep shame.

Jean Hannah Edelstein, an assistant at The Observer from 2007 to 2009, said Cohen was not alone in his behaviour. She recalled her editor hitting her with a sex whip as she walked by. Over one boozy lunch, she said, the same editor offered to help her career and suggested that she pose naked to promote her book.

Another woman, a freelancer who had recently been homeless and had depression, said she had met Cohen at a pub in 2010 to discuss her career. As they chatted, she said, he suddenly kissed her on the mouth and pressed his erection against her thigh. She said she fled.

“I just remember walking along Waterloo Bridge and thinking, ‘I can’t go to The Guardian with this. Who would they believe? He was one of their stars, and I was a freelance journalist with mental health issues.”

Heather Brooke, an investigative journalist, said she had initially dismissed her encounter with Mr. Cohen at the 2008 awards ceremony as “a one-off drunken mistake and didn’t take it further.” (“Nick Cohen got drunk and slapped my ass … ugh!” she wrote in her diary the next day.)

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca Watson, a writer and commentator, said Cohen had grabbed her bottom at a book party in 2009.

“To sexually assault a stranger at a book launch, to be one of the more prominent people there, and to just assume there will be no comeuppance,”

Not long after Siegle lodged her 2018 complaint records show that Cohen began working with a freelance copy editor, a single mother with autism.

She worked remotely for Cohen, unpaid. On June 29 2018, a work conversation on Twitter became punctuated with mutually flirtatious jokes. Cohen offered to send an explicit photograph. The woman declined. Cohen persisted and she deflected again.

In the following days, the copy editor said, Cohen turned cold. In messages, she apologised if she had misread the situation. Eventually, she told him continuing to work together “would be at a cost too high for my own mental health.”

Cohen, in an email to the NYT, said this was the only accusation to surface since he quit drinking and said it had been misrepresented.

It involves a friendship with a woman I never met that, sadly, went badly wrong.

In 2019, the copy editor asked The Guardian’s HR team about the process for raising sexual misconduct claims. She described the incident without naming Cohen, saying she felt “huge pressure” to go along with his “banter.”

Because she was not an employee, the copy editor said she was told that she would not be informed of the investigation’s outcome. Being frozen out of the process terrified her, so she backed off. This is almost certainly unlawful and someone personally contracting to do work is covered by discrimination legislation.

In the autumn of 2021, Siegle wrote on Twitter about her experience. Her lawyer, Jolyon Maugham, began making noises. Jan Thompson immediately emailed Siegle offering an investigation and accusing her of turning down a previous offer in 2018, which Siegle denied.

Eventually Cohen was suspended and The Guardian hired a law firm to carry out an independent inquiry. Neither Siegle nor the copy editor agreed to participate.

Suffice to say The Guardian has not offered Lucy Siegle or any other woman journalist the opportunity to put their side of the story. Freedom of the press and #MeToo  has its limits, after all!

Tony Greenstein

The Financial Times building in London. The newspaper spiked an investigation into Nick Cohen, a columnist at The Observer. Credit...Andrew Testa for The NYT