Jewish student Benjamin Cohen, 20, is set to launch legal proceedings against Channel 7 after he was wrongly named as the Westfield Bondi Junction killer. Cohen has engaged two of Australia’s foremost defamation lawyers in Patrick George of Giles George as his solicitor, and Sue Chrysanthou SC as barrister.
Cohen’s name and photo began circulating on X by online trolls on Saturday night, just hours after the horrific stabbing attack that claimed the lives of six people at the eastern suburbs shopping centre. It seems the fabricated claim originated on a small account sharing almost exclusively anti-Israel content, before other accounts with larger followings latched on.
Cohen was then wrongly linked to the attack by Sunrise co-host Matt Shirvington shortly after 6am on Sunday and again by journalist Lucy McLeod 10 minutes later.
Queensland man Joel Cauchi, 40, was subsequently identified as the killer.
Mr George confirmed he had sent a concerns notice to Seven, the first step in defamation proceedings. “We await a response from Seven,” George told reporters.
Seven issued an on-air apology to Cohen on Sunday and blamed ‘human error’ for the stunning blunder. “Earlier this morning, reports of the incident incorrectly named the perpetrator as 40-year-old Benjamin Cohen,” reporter Sarah Jane Bell said on air. “It was later confirmed that the name of the 40-year-old is Joel Cauchi from Queensland. Seven apologises for any distress caused by our earlier reports.”
Speaking to The Australian in a video, Cohen said: “It’s extremely disappointing to me to see people mindlessly propagating this information like this without even the slightest thought put into fact-checking. But what’s even more disappointing for me is a major news network doing this – using my name without waiting for a statement from the police to verify this, or going out to try and verify it themselves.”
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