Inside a shining office block in Whitechapel sits the headquarters of PinkNews, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ news website. When PinkNews was first founded by 23-year-old Benjamin Cohen in July 2005, it was a revolution.
The first major gay online news outlet in Britain, as well as one of the first in the world, staffed by a young, enigmatic gay man, who also happened to be Britain’s first dotcom millionaire. Cohen ran the website with a skeleton staff; one other full-time editor and a handful of freelancers. He was touted in the press as a British Zuckerberg.
Nearly 20 years on, things at PinkNews are decidedly less cutting edge. Last week, a BBC documentary which spoke to 30 current and former staffers at PinkNews found Cohen, 42, and his husband, former GP and chief operating officer of PinkNews Dr Anthony James, to be at the centre of a storm that involved allegations of sexual misconduct and bullying.
As part of those claims, one former staff member alleges they saw James kissing and touching a PinkNews employee at a work party while they were “too drunk to stand or talk” and “unable to consent”. Another employee made claims of inappropriate touching by Cohen. James has already been removed from his role at Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust due to the allegations, pending an investigation.
After days of silence, Cohen and James are finally fighting back. The pair have “strenuously denied” the allegations, calling them “false, inconsistent and malicious”. In response, they are also claiming that criminal offences were committed against them and that they have reported such offences to the police.
“In August, we made a criminal complaint to the police in relation to alleged offences committed against us that are connected with these recent reports. As we told the BBC prior to its initial broadcast, a police investigation was ongoing and we were advised not to make comment.” They claim that despite the BBC being aware of a police investigation (though into what is unclear), the BBC “broadcast and misled the public about our response.”
According to the BBC, another 10 former PinkNews employees have come forward and complained to the BBC since the documentary was released. The London Standard spoke to more than 10 current and former employees of PinkNews — some of whom featured in the BBC documentary — who have doubled down on allegations against the PinkNews bosses.
When Cohen started PinkNews in 2005, he was known as a wunderkind of the internet generation. Cohen had already profited from several online endeavours, including JewishNet.co.uk, the website described as “an early social network before the term really existed” in Wired, which he founded in 1998, aged 16. JewishNet.co.uk went on to be valued at £5 million later that year. Cohen was also involved with a search engine for internet pornography (hunt4porn.com) which formed part of his other venture, an internet portal called CyberBritain.com.
‘You’re my boss. Why are you touching me?’
Cohen’s online success granted him so much clout that he was named as Channel 4’s youngest ever technology correspondent age 23. While at Channel 4, Cohen struggled to land gay-centric news stories with traditional publishers, but he had recently struck up another hustle: PinkNews.
Here, he could publish stories for and about gay people, while also campaigning against discrimination and in favour of progressive policy changes, like the legalisation of gay marriage (enacted in 2013). PinkNews’s efforts lobbying Conservative politicians during this time (including David Cameron and Theresa May) is understood to have played a significant part in the legislation change.
Now, Cohen’s employees are revolting against his leadership, as well as the leadership of his husband, James. One former employee called the pair “truly morally reprehensible individuals”. Another current employee added: “[Ben] is not a personable person. You don’t feel comfortable speaking to him. He has this way of grinning while you’re speaking in a way that makes you feel like you’re being… not mocked, but taunted.”
Stephan Kyriacou, one of the former PinkNews employees who appeared in the BBC documentary and worked at the company between 2019 and 2021, claims to have had his own uncomfortable experience with Cohen at a Christmas party where he says he was touched inappropriately by the CEO as part of a “dare”.
Repeating comments previously shared with the BBC, he told the Standard: “We were in a restaurant or bar they had hired out for the evening and I was stood with my friends literally talking and having a drink. He ran past me and smacked me on the bum. I was like, ‘what on earth just happened.’ Apparently it was a dare. I was like, ‘I actually don’t care, you’re a grown man and my boss. Why are you touching me?’”
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The discrimination claims include an allegation from the BBC documentary that Cohen asked a female employee of PinkNews if she would consider being a surrogate for his child. Cohen has denied this allegation. Moreover, many former employees who spoke to the Standard recall Cohen’s repeated insistence that PinkNews should become “The Gay-ly Mail” by running more salacious stories and fewer serious ones, including pivoting away from running stories about trans people.
An X account entitled “PinkNews Whistleblowers” kickstarted the conversation around PinkNews’s coverage of transgender issues when it leaked audio that showed Cohen dismissing a campaign for trans rights as “too contentious”. The Standard has obtained a recording of a phone call from a former staff member where James explains that Cohen’s dismissal of the trans rights campaign was due to a number of factors, including PinkNews “losing money” and “entering into a redundancy process”.
One former PinkNews employee suggested that Cohen once “marched into the newsroom and yelled that a different outlet was ‘talking about [his] penis.’ It was inappropriate, gross, and classic Ben.”
When the BBC documentary was released last week, staff members didn’t hear anything for a while, save for “one Slack message from Anthony, which was prompted by 12 members of staff asking for an update”, a current staff member said. They added: “The atmosphere in the office is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before — everyone is miserable and just wants answers.”
Every single former and current employee contacted by the Standard voiced a desire for Cohen to step down as CEO. “Ben and Anthony must leave PinkNews,” said one former employee. “The company desperately needs new leadership who won’t make staff members feel awful and abused on a daily basis, and that won’t happen with them there.” When I asked current staffer Jamie* if they would feel comfortable raising issues about Cohen or James with HR, they said, “My god, no.”
Staff speaking out, even under the condition of anonymity, are doing so with great trepidation. While life at PinkNews might be very uncomfortable right now, it is still people’s livelihood.
But Cohen and James have, of course, claimed that they are the victims of criminal offences too. As part of their statement denying all of the allegations made in the BBC documentary, they said: “We are now aware that devices had been seized with forensic investigations continuing.
The statement adds: “We had explained to the BBC, that the stage of the police investigation meant that it was not possible for us to comment on the specific allegations even though they were strenuously denied. The BBC disregarded the police investigation and then misled its audience about our response.
“The impact of the BBC’s reporting on our family life has been significant and it has caused extremely serious harm to us, PinkNews and our colleagues.”
Hertfordshire Constabulary has said it is currently investigating a report of online harassment. Inquiries are ongoing at this time.
