OK.
Not quite the same way. Their roles are very different, they’re in different countries etc. But substantial part of the formal media and a vast number array of informal commentators etc mock the absolute fuck out of Trump and Johnson while are some are more reserved and others are outright asslickers.
Which is remarkably similar to Arday’s treatment. And until you can see that I can’t take you seriously.
Do you think there might be a point between the first negative story and, say, the 233rd where the balance between public interest in the facts being known and the impact on the subject’s mental health might tip?
I do agree that journalists can’t spike stories on the basis that it might have an impact on the subject’s mental health. But it is also well known that relentless media focus on individuals can be a factor in driving them to suicide.
After he resigned we had reached a point where the facts about Arday were in the public sphere, Arday had taken accountability and journalists were being explicitly warned that his mental health was suffering badly. At that point, the decision to keep publishing stories has a very different moral calculus than it did when the initial revelations were being published.
…again: I wasn’t talking about mocking.
I was talking about the allegation that Arday was a fabulist. That the reason he got all of this press coverage is because he was a fabulist.
Trump and Johnson are HUGE fabulists. Trump lies multiple times per day. Johnson is a HUGE liar. But we don’t get forensic examinations of those lies. That doesn’t happen. Instead: Trump gets treated like the President of the United States of America. His lies at this point are completely normalised. The press doesn’t say “the President lied” they say “the President said”.
I would love it if the press treated these fabulists the same way as they treated Arday. Because unlike Arday it would be about holding the powerful to acocunt.
You are saving me on tickets to go see comedians. Really. Keep going.
…show me the 100 articles in the last two weeks that forensically examined Trump’s lies. You won’t find them because it wasn’t about Arday’s alleged lies.
I agree with your point. But what are - at least to me - the most substantive issues arose pre-resignation and exist completely independently of the intensity of the coverage.
In my view, the intensity of the coverage, and his subsequent unfortunate suicide are being used as a shield and distraction. Read this thread and you can see plenty of negative views of the spotlight brought to bear on Arday that are not limited to the coverage after his resignation.
There is a common fairytale involving a father of a potential bride (or the bride herself) who deliberately sets ridiculous tasks for potential suitors. Nominally the idea is to set a test of their abilities, and narratively the idea is to provide a maguffin. But the sub-text is of course that the father (or bride) wants to prevent marriage.
I’m not going to search out “100 articles” for you. What you don’t believe is not of a sufficient concern.
So I referenced the resignation as a clear bright line when the apparent public interest goal of the coverage (that he be held to account) had clearly been met. But even before that it was clear that this was a story that was being amplified well beyond its real world importance. Those negative views about the spotlight - they had a good point! They should have been listened to! If so, Arday’s kids might still have a father.
I think - with some caveats* - that it was right to report the allegations and Arday’s response to them. And to look critically at Cambridge’s promotion of him in tokenistic terms. But even before his resignation, there were real and obvious problems with the scale and tone of the coverage, which also tokenised Arday and used him as nothing more than a symbol for some pretty unpleasant - and unevidenced - culture war charges.
There’s a point, where a journalist is lining up a week three Arday story, that they can legitimately ask themselves what the likely cumulative impact of that story will be on a) public awareness of the facts and b) the mental health of the human at the centre of this and have a discussion about professional ethics and what duties are owed to whom.
It is not remotely apparent that these discussions were ever held, and it is fair to suggest that this merits some serious reflection.
I will say for my own part that I regarded this story with interest and concern, but also a little amusement at the tall tales, and did not seriously reflect until too late on what the effect of this relentless struggle session would be on Arday. This was a failure on my part.
*The caveats being: At the instigation of racists, the media destroyed a man.
The negative views about the spotlight were not limited to its intensity - they consisted in substantial part of views that Arday’s fabulism and plagiarism should have been swept under the carpet altogether because the whistleblowers were ill-motivated and Arday was from a minority etc.
The media finished the job on a man who seems to have been reckless as to his own destruction.
Moderating:
This is MPSIMS, not the pit. Talk about the issues. Don’t insult other posters.
If you think there’s something wrong in that post that’s worth engaging with, respond to that. Otherwise, move on. If you think the post is inappropriate, ignore it. If you need to insult the poster, you know where the pit is.
…you won’t need to because I’ve already looked and I couldn’t verify any of those claims. Most are just assumptions. None of it is newsworthy.
The man destroyed himself.
OK so yes, I think it’s wrong to sweep wrongdoing under the carpet and the backtracking from some of the original signatories of the open letter is quite instructive in terms of showing that Arday really had crossed some professional lines.
But I think the fact that the accusations were made by racists with an explicit goal not just of targeting a Black man who had gained prominence in his field but of discrediting every Black academic should have tempered the way in which the story was reported. Instead of course, plenty of the media knew exactly what the racists’ angle was here, and were only too happy to pursue it.
Jason Arday had agency and made decisions which he is responsible for. But I am not going to pretend not to know that relentless negative press attention has been shown - long before this story kicked off - to have debilitating effects on its targets’ mental health, up to and including suicide.
Examining questionable claims about past service and past achievements is not limited to academia, or minorities. The ‘Stolen Valor’ movement in the US, and equivalents in England have highlighted false or exaggerated claims by individuals about military service, and where such claims have been advanced to access benefits or prestige which would otherwise have gone to someone else there is legitimate public interest in exposing such fabulists.
Yes, that was the point that the author of the article, who is Black, was making. The people who went after Arday believe Black people are not smart enough to be professors at Cambridge, and if they are professors at Cambridge, it’s because they are DEI hires. The main instigator of the media frenzy against Arday was a man who believes, and expresses openly, that Black people are of inferior intelligence and don’t belong in universities.
“Black people don’t deserve high-status jobs” far predates the concept of DEI hires. Harper was rightly observing that some people believe that in a true meritocracy, white people would be on top.
No, but minorites get a lot more scrutiny, and when questions about their claims arise, those questions get a lot more press. At least, that’s the claim people are making here.
I haven’t really followed this guy. But i have seen it happen to other high-profile Black people, as i mentioned above.
There’s currently a movement in the U.K. to pass “Arday’s Law”, which would limit the number of news stories about someone in a given time frame.
The proposed law has close to 5,000 signatures on a change.org petition. Amnesty International is backing it. Some U.K. lawmakers are reportedly in agreement.
It’s unclear just what limits are desired. Would a newspaper be allowed to publish two stories on an individual’s alleged transgressions/crimes in a 72-hour period, but four stories would break the law? Or would two stories by all combined media be the liimit for a 72-hour period?
It’s easy to see that corrupt politicians and sleazy businessmen would love the protections provided by such a law. If similar legislation had existed in the U.S., Graham Platner would have benefited greatly (he could potentially have shut down reporting by saying he was vulnerable due to his history of PTSD). All the stories we’ve been seeing on Natalie Harp? No dice. Donald Trump would enthusiastically promote “Donald’s Law” on Truth Social.
We’ll see how far this latest backlash against journalistic freedom goes, but it’s alarming that the idea has gotten any traction.
There are two other unintentional consequences of such a law:
First, if someone is falsely accused of a crime (murder, rape, etc), the media may do a blitz of coverage that indicates he’s guilty, but then when he is exonerated, the media would have already run into its Arday’s-Law limit and would not be allowed to run coverage telling the public that he was innocent.
Secondly, a cap on all articles published by the media as a whole would give incentive for one media outlet to immediately squeeze out all rivals by publishing a barrage of articles to consume the limit to the max. If, say, the legal limit is 100 articles within 1 month, then the Guardian could instantly publish 100 articles about an individual of notoriety and thus prevent any of its competitors from being able to publish a single article.
Telling that restrictions on the freedom of the press is seen as the logical response here.