Channel 7 presenter Matt Shirvington names innocent man Benjamin Cohen as Bondi Junction killer

One of Seven’s highest-profile stars has wrongly named the Westfield Bondi Juntion killer during a live cross on the station’s breakfast program | WATCH

Channel 7 Sunrise presenter Matt Shirvington incorrectly named the Bondi killer as Benjamin Cohen during television coverage of the murders. Picture: Channel 7 / YouTube

One of Channel 7’s highest-profile presenters, Sunrise co-host Matt Shirvington, named an innocent man as the Bondi Junction knife-wielding murderer during an on-air wrap of the tragedy.

Shirvington told Weekend Sunrise that the killer was “40-year-old Benjamin Cohen, dressed in a Kangaroos ARL jersey”, who was “shot and killed by a brave female police officer.”

Shirvington’s comments aired at 6.05am AEST and just 10 minutes later during the same broadcast, presenters Monique Wright and Michael Usher spoke with reporter Lucy McLeod who was outside the shopping centre.

She too wrongly named Cohen as the killer.

“The attacker, 40-year-old Benjamin Cohen, is known to police, his motives are not yet known, he was working on his own,” McLeod said during the live cross.

NSW Police subsequently named 40-year-old Joel Cauchi as the killer; Benjamin Cohen had nothing to do with the murderous rampage whatsoever.

The stunning error is deeply embarrassing for Seven, which prides itself on the strength of its news coverage.

Seven also contacted Cohen on Sunday afternoon to apologise and an apology was also broadcast on TV.

Channel 7 has blamed “human error” for identifying the wrong man as the offender.

The network’s news boss, Craig McPherson, who has oversight of Sunrise (as well as the scandal-plagued current affairs program, Spotlight) could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

Mr Cohen, a first-year UTS student who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs not far from Bondi Junction, said Seven’s mistake was “highly distressing” for him and his family.

“It’s extremely disappointing to me to see people mindlessly propagating misinformation like this without even the slightest thought put into fact checking,” he told The Australian.

“But what’s even more disappointing to me is a major news network doing this, using my name without waiting for a statement from police to verify this or going out to try and verify it themselves.”

Seven’s official 7NEWS Australia YouTube account – which has 1.66 million subscribers – also aired a report, led by presenters Monique Wright and Michael Usher, with a caption underneath that wrongly named Benjamin Cohen as the “attacker”.

The video was online for more than one hour and attracted thousands of views.

After Seven was contacted by The Australian about the mistake the video clip was quickly deleted from its official YouTube channel.

The name Cohen is a common Jewish name, and means priest in Hebrew. Mr Cohen’s name began circulating in relation to the fatal attack on social media platform X late on Saturday night

X doesn’t have a corporate presence in Australia, and attempts to reach a company spokesperson on Sunday were unsuccessful.

It later emerged that Cohen’s name was also published – in relation to the killings – in the comments section of Ten’s official TikTok account, and on the TikTok comments page of news.com.au, Nine News and the Daily Mail.

A spokesperson for Ten said: “It is network policy for comments to be disabled for stories of this nature. Unfortunately they were inadvertently left on. As soon as this was noticed, comments were disabled. We sincerely apologise for any distress this has caused.”

A spokesperson for news.com.au said: “We had comments disabled on social media posts and moderated heavily but unfortunately this was missed on TikTok.

“Comments were disabled as soon as we realised and we apologise for the error.

A Nine spokesperson said: “We have not and would not ever run such a claim on air or as part of our reporting. Our social media teams are using all the tools available and enforcing our community guidelines.”

Daily Mail was approached for comment but did not respond.

It’s not the first time in recent years that Seven has found itself in hot water over naming the wrong person in relation to a serious crime.

In 2022, Terrance Flowers, a 27-year-old Nyamal man from the town of Karratha, sued Seven after the network published his photograph in news broadcasts, an online article, a tweet and a Facebook post about the arrest of a different man in relation to the abduction of three-year-old WA girl Cleo Smith.

Seven apologised, and reached a confidential settlement with Flowers.