Benjamin Cohen: The Jewish Conman behind PinkNews

The jew-dominated BBC – more on that in a forthcoming article – has recently aired an investigated program about the prominent homosexual/transsexual news site ‘PinkNews’ titled ‘PinkNews: Behind Closed Doors’. (1)

‘PinkNews’ is the world’s largest homosexual/transsexual news site (2) and is a major ‘champion of the LGTBQ+ movement globally’. (3) It is also a good part of why ‘gay marriage’ was legalised in the UK (4) with its founder Benjamin Cohen founding the campaigning group ‘Out for Marriage’ for this purpose and testifying in support of the legislation authorizing this change in front of a parliamentary committee. (5)

With such a success profile it is not surprising that ‘PinkNews’ revenues in 2020 were ‘millions of pounds’. (6)

So just what is going on at ‘PinkNews’ to interest the normally ardently pro-homosexual BBC?

Well as Josh Parry – the BBC’s ‘LGBT & identity reporter’ – explains at length (which is necessary to include so that you can appreciate how much good investigative journalism the BBC has actually done for once):

‘The couple who run PinkNews, the world's largest LGBT news website, have been accused by staff of multiple incidents of sexual misconduct.

Several former staff members told the BBC they saw Anthony James, a director at the UK-based company and husband of its founder, kissing and touching a junior colleague who they say appeared too drunk to consent.

And more than 30 current and former members of staff said a culture of heavy drinking led to instances when founder Benjamin Cohen and his husband behaved inappropriately towards younger male employees.’ (7)

‘Away from the cameras and red carpets, however, multiple former staff members have told the BBC they had experienced bullying and sexual misconduct which made some of them feel unsafe to be alone around Mr Cohen and Dr James. Allegations of misogyny have also emerged and several people told us that some young female members of staff had been asked to act as the couple's surrogates.

As well as interviewing 33 people who worked at PinkNews between 2017 and 2024, we have also seen a variety of evidence including official written complaints, private emails and WhatsApp messages sharing staff members’ concerns, plus doctors’ records referring to stress and mental health struggles attributed to the work environment at PinkNews.’ (8)

‘Five former members of staff told the BBC they had witnessed Dr James groping and kissing a junior member of staff, who they said was "too drunk to stand or talk" and "unable to consent".

The alleged incident happened outside a central London pub, where staff had gathered after a PinkNews event.

A former PinkNews staff member, who we are calling Gary, said Dr James had led the junior colleague behind a tree. "Anthony was just forcing himself on somebody who wasn’t able to make that decision for themselves because of how intoxicated they were," he said.

People at the event said they helped the alleged victim get home in a taxi.

But several former members of staff who said they witnessed the incident told us they were too scared to complain. One person said: "It’s the CEO’s husband, what are you going to do? Lose your job?"

A complaint about the incident was made later by a staff member, and was shared with several members of the senior leadership team at PinkNews. The BBC has been shown multiple copies of the complaint but has been unable to establish whether any action was taken as a result.

Stephan Kyriacou, who worked at PinkNews between 2019 and 2021, said the job had started as a "dream come true" where he did not have to "hide who I was or pretend", but the dream was soon "shattered".

During a Christmas party, Mr Kyriacou said, Mr Cohen had slapped him on the bottom in front of everyone else.

"I just shut down for a minute. I didn’t know what to say. I was in shock. I remember turning to my friends and saying, 'What the hell just happened?'"

Mr Kyriacou said he no longer felt comfortable enough to be alone around his boss.

He said: "That just made me completely avoid him. I don’t remember ever speaking to him one-on-one after that."

Other staff also voiced their concerns about Mr Cohen, Mr Kyriacou said, with several messages in a group chat describing him as a "creep" and staff saying they did not feel comfortable around him.

"None of us really felt like we could complain because we didn’t know what was going to happen to us. Ben is very well-known and we didn’t know whether he was going to badmouth us to people," Mr Kyriacou said.

'Creepy and sleazy'

Staff have told us they were shouted at and belittled by Mr Cohen, and that there was a "toxic" culture at the company.

"He can be quite brutal in the way he speaks to you," said Damian. "When things go wrong he’d come down on you like a tonne of bricks and so you were just in this constant state of emotional flux.

"He put extreme pressures on me to the point I would go home and cry. It caused issues in my own personal relationship with my partner, and then [Benjamin] would love-bomb me and I would think everything was alright."

Cai Wilshaw, former head of external affairs at PinkNews, said: "You had this sort of dark cloud in the office sometimes when Ben was there, that made it really difficult to actually enjoy working there.

"We worked together quite well, but it is clear that he is a very, very difficult character, and sometimes overly so in a way that really impacted people who worked with him."

Some staff members also said they had witnessed what they called "misogynistic" behaviour.

Several people said that on occasions young, female members of staff had been asked to act as a surrogate for Mr Cohen and Dr James.

They say that often the request was delivered as a joke, but that it had made people feel "awkward and uncomfortable".

One anonymous staff member called it "creepy and sleazy", while another called it "part and parcel" of how "misogynistic" PinkNews was.

A spokesperson for the National Union of Journalists said it has reached out to its members following the "deeply disturbing" allegations, which they say "paint a picture of a dysfunctional and wholly unacceptable workplace environment".

Many of the staff who spoke to the BBC said they hope the culture at PinkNews can change so it can continue to tell stories relevant to the LGBT community.

"It’s important because the mainstream media doesn’t often report on whatever’s happening to trans or queer people," said Stephan Kyriacou. "I think if it can be overhauled, that will make a massive difference."

Gary said there was a need for "authentic queer-led journalism and queer-led stories" but said "unfortunately PinkNews has kind of lost its credibility in that arena".

Damian told us he believed PinkNews’ future could only be secured if Mr Cohen and Dr James took a step back.

"The fact you cannot separate the two is extremely problematic," he said. "Ben needs to be held to account. Until the day that happens, I don’t know if there’s a future for PinkNews."’ (9)

Once again, I apologise for the lengthy quotation from Parry’s BBC article but as you will now appreciate: the BBC has not made these accusations lightly and has done a lot of fact-checking and cross-checking about the claims. Far more so than they would do in a story about British nationalists for example.

However, the nub of the issue is that ‘PinkNews’ is full of impressionable young (and isolated) homosexuals/trannies who feel they are ‘working for a cause’, but are routinely getting sexually propositioned and slept with – while drunk and also seemingly sober as well – by the ‘gay couple’ who run ‘PinkNews’: Benjamin Cohen and Anthony James.

Further ‘PinkNews’’ senior management and HR department are not in any responsive to complaints and do not follow any of the normal policies and procedures dealing with such conduct.

The reason for this is really quite simple: Cohen is CEO of ‘PinkNews’ while his husband Anthony James – who is the source of most of the complaints – is COO, while Cohen’s father is the chief legal counsel and his ‘sister-in-law’ – it is unclear if this means James’ sister or another relative of Cohen’s – is a ‘senior figure’ in ‘PinkNews’’ HR department. (10)

In essence it is classic workplace corruption and given at least two – possibly three – of those directly involved are jewish, while none of those identified as victims have been jewish: it also suggests that jewishness is a significant factor in the sexual abuse and mistreatment of employees.

Naturally ‘PinkNews’ have denied the allegations made by the BBC and claimed they are ‘false, inconsistent and malicious’. (11)

However, Cohen has form for this kind of thing since his first foray into internet entrepreneurship occurred in his teens when he created and ran a site called ‘JewishNet’.

As a BBC article from the time explains:

‘The site, Jewishnet.co.uk, carries a range of information on cultural and religious subjects as well as an e-mail agony aunt and the first "cyber rabbi".

After the float it will be renamed SoJewish.com. It has agreed a deal with the London Jewish News to provide news and editorial content.

SoJewish will be headed up by Gary Sterns from the London Jewish News.

Hertfordshire schoolboy Benjamin planned the business during the four years he spent fighting the illness ME.

"I was in bed really ill and came up with the idea," he said.

Mr Cohen said that when he had thought up the plan, he had not been aiming to make millions, only at helping the Jewish community.’ (12)

Cohen allegedly ‘poured all his energy’ into ‘JewishNet’ (13) but also set up a specialist internet pornography search engine called ‘hunt4porn.com’ around the same time. (14)

When it came to soliciting buyers/donations/investment Cohen deliberately lied about his company’s financial valuation for his own personal profit as Cellan-Jones chronicles:

‘He lied about being worth 5 million as a ‘dotcom teenager’ which fooled businessmen not so much journalists.’ (15)

Indeed, what Cellan-Jones is describing in concerning Cohen is behaviour of a conman skirting the edges of legality not an honest businessman building up a productive business:

‘Whatever you may think of Benjamin Cohen, you have to admire his ability to manipulate the media. The increasingly outlandish values put on his flimsy company merely reflected the mood of the time. But then some of the bigger dot.coms, which managed to sell shares based on even more outlandish valuations, were to prove equally flimsy.’ (16)

In essence then Cohen has form for running shady businesses that skirt/flout the rules from ‘JewishNet’ to ‘PinkNews’ but it is ironic that his most successful was a specialist porn engine!

Who said that jews weren’t and aren’t central to the promotion of homosexuality and pornography?

References

(1) If you want to watch it, then it is available here: https://www.bbc.com/iplayer/episode/m0026ldb/pinknews-behind-closed-doors

(2) Ibid., 0 Minutes: 08 Seconds

(3) Ibid., 0 Minutes: 20 Seconds

(4) Ibid., 0 Minutes: 25 Seconds; 5 Minutes: 45 Seconds

(5) Ibid., 6 Minutes: 10 Seconds

(6) Ibid., 7 Minutes: 5 Seconds

(7) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9q4zvwldvo

(8) Ibid.

(9) Ibid.

(10) ‘PinkNews: Behind Closed Doors’, 13 Minutes: 50 Seconds

(11) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmn4kwpkydo

(12) http://news.bbc.com/1/hi/business/593311.stm

(13) Rory Cellan-Jones, 2003, ‘Dot.Bomb: The Strange Death of Dot.com Britain’, 2nd Edition, Aurum: London, p. 115

(14) Ibid., p. 117

(15) Ibid., p. 114

(16) Ibid., p. 118