Jason Arday: Demand a public inquiry now
To: UK Prime Minister, UK Culture Secretary
Enough is enough.
There cannot be any doubt that Dr Arday’s tragic death was the direct, foreseeable and foreseen result of press harassment. A significant element in that harassment was the colour of his skin. Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed.
Several weeks ago, Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research centre, warned publicly that “1 in 4 autistic people have planned or attempted suicide” and talked of the “relentless bullying of a vulnerable autistic man” which “raises safe-guarding issues”. Many of the signatories to this letter warned multiple media outlets privately that their relentless pursuit of Dr Arday risked his suicide.
Two weeks of relentless harassment followed, continuing even after his resignation as a Professor when the reasonable public interest in the story had diminished or evaporated. Yesterday, Dr Arday died in the most tragic circumstances. His tragic death did not result from the allegations of plagiarism but from the press coverage.
There cannot be any doubt that racism lay at the heart of this story.
Dr Arday was a relatively obscure figure outside of academia. Far more consequential figures, in whom there was a profound public interest, like Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds faced plausible allegations of embellishing their CVs or plagiarism. But the stories garnered relatively little coverage. When the academic Professor George Holmes – not merely a Professor but a Vice Chancellor – was implicated in a fraud scandal the story was barely covered. So too when William O’Reilly, another Professor at the University of Cambridge, faced plausible allegations of plagiarising student essays, again, there was very little in the media. When the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, faced plagiarism allegations they, also, received a tiny fraction of the coverage given to Dr Arday.
What those stories had in common is that they were about white people.
The harassment of public figures because of the colour of their skin is not unique to Dr Arday. Misan Harriman, Diane Abbott, Eniola Aluko, Jameela Jamil, Halima Begum and others have experienced press harassment with racist overtones. To be Black and a public figure is now enough to make you a target.
Black people are fearful and on the evidence they are right to be.
The years since the Leveson inquiry have taught us that the press is not interested in self-regulation. IPSO has failed. Lessons that should have been learned from the tragic deaths of Lucy Meadows and then Caroline Flack were not learned. Instead of getting better, press conduct is getting worse. And the impact of that failure is deadly.
We respectfully ask you to commission an immediate public inquiry into how to ensure a responsible press given its contribution to Dr Arday’s tragic death.
