Nick Cohen, Phillip Schofield and British media’s own #MeToo reckoning

Sections of the British media have been accused of a “cover-up” following revelations about Phillip Schofield’s conduct at ITV and allegations against newspaper commentator Nick Cohen.

Cohen left his job at The Guardian and The Observer in November 2022 following accusations of sexual harassment from a number of women working at the two papers.

Although the columnist was praised for his work on his departure, and said he was leaving “on health grounds”, The Daily Telegraph reported that 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”.

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The New York Times (NYT) said that Financial Times (FT) journalist Madison Marriage was the first to secure the “potentially explosive scoop” on the real reason behind Cohen’s departure. But her story was not published because her editor, Roula Khalaf, “killed it, according to interviews with a dozen Financial Times journalists”, said the NYT.

‘A cover-up’

Now, both the FT and GNM are coming under scrutiny for what some are describing as a cover-up. “Some of his [Cohen’s] alleged victims have accused GNM of failing to act on complaints they made to managers over a period of years,” said The Telegraph.

The British media has a “complicated relationship with outing its own”, said the NYT, referencing the axed story. “And in a traditional newsroom culture of drinking and gender imbalances, many stories of misconduct go untold, or face a fight”, the paper said.

But with the latest revelations, it seems the industry is being forced to reckon with ideas of sexual harassment, violence against women, and the wider #MeToo movement – which began to spread virally in 2017 as a response to allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein.

Journalist Lucy Siegle, who reported Cohen to The Guardian in 2018 for allegedly groping her in the newsroom, told the NYT 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.”

However, the issue of misconduct and how it is dealt with extends beyond print media. Novara Media’s Moya Lothian-McLean drew comparisons between the Cohen issue and the latest scandal surrounding Phillip Schofield and ITV.

Schofield announced last week that he was stepping down from the broadcaster after admitting an affair with a much younger male colleague on the “This Morning” programme, a relationship he described as “unwise, but not illegal” in an apology statement to the Daily Mail.

“These two stories are potentially the start of a much wider conversation about sexual misconduct in British media,” McLean said. “It’s one that we haven’t really seen take place on the same scale as it has in America.” She added: “This will rumble on – it’s far from over.”

‘#MeToo a failed movement’

“While there have been many legislative changes to try to tackle sexual misconduct at work across the US, very little has actually changed in law here in the UK,” Georgina Calvert-Lee, an employment law expert, told Metro.

She said that “wholesale reform to the costs rules in the employment tribunal” would be required.

Six years on from the initial #MeToo movement, many are asking whether enough has changed. “The #MeToo movement is a failed movement,” Caroline Heldman, professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, told France 24. “To be effective, social movements need to put in mechanisms of accountability – and at the end of the day that goal has not been met and the movement has lost steam.”

Writing for The New European, Siegle said she felt “angry and adrift” after going to The Guardian with her story, and explained she has “lost count of the number of women of my vintage and younger who have been ‘discouraged’ from reporting men who have sexually harassed or insulted them”.

Cohen told the NYT he was the “only person whose life is turned over because of this”. Marriage told the NYT she could not comment on “FT decision-making”. An FT spokesperson said: “Some reporting leads to published stories and some does not.” Khalaf did not respond to requests by the NYT for comment.

A GNM spokesperson told The Telegraph that the organisation “instigated our own HR investigations” after further details of the allegations surfaced. A serious allegation was raised confidentially in 2018, but the group said the victim “did not wish to pursue the complaint”.