Sexual misconduct in British journalism, news publishers’ deals with AI companies – weekly news digest

Welcome to The Fix’s weekly news digest! Every week, we bring you important news stories from the world of media – and try to put them in a wider context

British media failed to adequately cover prominent columnist Nick Cohen’s departure from The Guardian’s parent company, which was caused by his long term sexual misconduct, The New York Times reports.

The investigation by NYT’s Jane Bradley shows that The Financial Times refused to publish a story about “years of unwanted sexual advances and groping of female journalists” by Cohen, who worked for two decades as columnist for The Observer, The Guardian’s sister paper, and left last year.

Bradley writes that FT investigative reporter Madison Marriage had “a potentially explosive scoop” about Cohen’s misconduct but the paper’s editor decided not to run this story. FT’s decision not to run the piece was not caused by lack of evidence, Bradley reports based on interviews with multiple FT journalists, but rather by editor Roula Khalaf ’s judgement that the story didn’t fit FT’s thematic scope. 

Cohen’s column was “paused” in the summer of 2022 following allegations of sexual misconduct, and he left the company in January, formally on “health grounds”. The company “paid him a financial settlement for quitting and agreed to confidentiality”, NYT reports; Cohen launched a Substack newsletter after his departure. For years before, Cohen’s misconduct such as groping female colleagues was an open secret in the newsroom, NYT’s Bradley writes. 

The New York Times argues that this case shows a broader lack of reckoning with sexual misconduct in British media. As Bradley writes, while major US newsrooms like Fox News, CNN and NYT itself have grappled with sexual harassment scandals, “British journalism has seen no such reckoning”. She posits that “The British news media is smaller and cozier than its American counterpart, with journalists often coming from the same elite schools”, and “stringent libel laws [particularly compared to American laws present another hurdle”.

Indeed, while Cohen’s departure and FT’s decision not to cover it are important in and of themselves, this story is obviously coloured by the fact that, while some allegations against Cohen were reported previously, it took an American newspaper to uncover their full extent. In 2021, it was also The New York Times that first reported on the accusations of sexual misconduct and toxic work culture at German newspaper Bild, which eventually led to the sacking of its chief editor Julian Reichelt.

Major news companies are exploring deals with AI firms “that could help them reap the benefits of AI’s explosive consumer adoption, rather than be overcome by it”, Axios reports.

In recent years the media industry in the West has collectively bargained with big tech companies, particularly Google and Facebook, to pay for the use of news on their platform.

In some countries this has come with the help of government regulation, most notably in Australia. In other cases big tech companies have proactively struck deals with publishers to thwart government meddling. 

Generative AI, where Microsoft, Google and (Microsoft-backed) OpenAI are emerging leaders for now, is still relatively nascent, and state regulation isn’t likely to come soon. Still, AI will likely have a significant impact on the business model of news, such as by reducing search traffic.

No particular schemes are on the table yet, Axios’  Sara Fischer writes, but firms like News Corp – a company led Rupert Murdoch that owns The Wall Street Journal and some of the biggest newspapers in the UK and Australia – are actively exploring the plans to take in upon themselves to negotiate deals with AI companies so as to capture some of the upside of generative AI.