Just to be clear that’s right now a petition, not a major serious legislation draft yet, right? I see no indication of a great groundswell of support beyond. Besides being IMO a halfbaked idea as pointed our by several prior posts.
Actually the main reaction has been to urge some voluntary restraint on the part of the press and a healthy dose of skepticism in swallowing bullshit purveyor’s output.
But your take is er, interesting.
I bet the royals like the sound of this law.
Yeah, that’s a bad idea. Restricting the press for any reason is a bad idea.
That does raise the question of what might actually be effective. Public boycott of tabloids?
Aren’t there consequences for printing stuff that’s not true as if it’s fact? Because out of 100 articles I have to believe the newsroom had quite a few fabulists of their own.
I’m not sure about the law in the UK but are there anything like defamation lawsuits?
A relevant quote from Richard Dawkins:
I am bewildered, and not very impressed, by the visceral, naked, irrational hatred spat out by some defenders of Jason Arday. If a Cambridge professor is accused of being an unqualified charlatan, the accusation might be racially motivated. On the other hand it might not, depending on the evidence. The correct question to ask is not, ”What is the colour of his skin” but “Is it in fact true that he is an unqualified charlatan?” Please examine the evidence before leaping to the assumption of racism.
As for the idea that journalists “piled in on him” and “hounded him to his death”, most attacks were against Cambridge University. Jason himself was widely regarded as an unfortunate victim of foolish promotion way beyond his ability to cope. In appointing him to a professorship for which he was manifestly unqualified – in ludicrously describing him as “the best in the world” – certain senior members of the university showed a level of patronising condescension towards black people that could fairly be described as racism, while at the same time making him tragically vulnerable to such attacks as came his way.
I would qualify Dawkins’ take in that I would nonetheless take the accusation of of “being an unqualified charlatan” with a lorryfull of salt if among its primary promoters were “race realists”. But if it got traction in public opinion then I would have to look into it to be able to say “we’ve found out (X) and will deal with it to OUR institutional standards, not the demands of the Street.”
(And FWIW there is a range between “best in the world” and “unqualified charlatan”. )
Yes, but I think they have a “loser pays” feature that tends to put a damper on such things.
The common perception in the USA is that libel law in the UK if anything is more favorable to the complainant than here.
But we have a lot of evidence that it was. The guy who spearheaded this crusade is a known racist with an axe to grind about Black people in universities, and he intentionally went after Arday to prove his theory that Black people don’t belong at Cambridge.
It’s really a leap to think this wasn’t racially motivated.
Now, the problem he was exposing was real and we have to separate that from this man’s racist intent. And there’s plenty of blame to go 'round because holding Black people to a lower standard is definitely racist.
But yes of course a huge part of this was driven by racism.
And the fact that he was Black absolutely belongs in the public discourse. This is a thorny, multi-faceted issue, and the racist crusade against DEI is one facet.
If you can access it, there was a good discussion on the BBC’s The Media Show…
Here’s an article of interest.
Dawkins continues his run of being completely wrong on social issues.
As mentioned by @Spice_Weasel , this was a racially-motivated campaign in its origin. Then we have that the majority of articles features the words “black” or “black professor” in the headline, often the first words. Finally we can ask whether accusations of plagiarism against other professors and post-docs have captured the same media attention.
The headlines also featured Jason Arday’s full name and photo in most cases. It would be laughable to suggest the real victim is a faceless institution, were it not for the fact we’re talking about a death here.
Also, as mentioned, they continued to write stories and appeal for further testimonies after he’d resigned his position. That’s another reason we’re calling this hounding.
Huh.
I see an article in the December 8th, 2008 Basingstoke and North Hampton Gazette (“Reserves’ goal glut takes them top”) begins:
Basingstoke Town Reserves 11
Chalfont St Peter 0Dominic Cunliffe’s team surged to the top of the Suburban League Premier Division table following this rout, which saw Ryan Stephens find the back of the net five times.
The visitors were simply unable to handle the Town attack and their cause was not helped at half-time, when goal-keeper Jason Arday suffered an epileptic fit and had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance.
That took me literally 45 seconds to find, through the arduous task of “I searched for ‘Jason Arday’ on newspapers.com before 2025.” I know doing something like that would be an unreasonable imposition for smaller British outlets like the “Guardian,” which unlike the Middle East Eye is always begging me for money.
So perhaps in addition to the limit on news stories, the government could subsidize a subscription to Lexis-Nexis or something for struggling local papers as they strive to deliver the hard-hitting stories we really need. You know, stories about people who try to achieve professional success by just making interesting things up. Who would do that? It’s wild.
You wouldn’t be saying that if Jason Arday had been white.
Even if that is the same Arday, that’s well into straight amateur, that is not semi-professional.
You know, seeing the evidence here that a lot of those accusations against Arday were made up… Yeah, he might be.
If you read the article I posted, it says the following:
Another claim derided online in the past few weeks was that Arday played semi-professional football. In fact he played for two semi-professional clubs, Walton and Hersham FC and Lewisham Borough FC.
I don’t know enough about football clubs and what counts as professional to nitpick, but it sure doesn’t sound like he was making things up out of whole cloth, or that the Guardian did much fact checking at all.
I suppose you’re right. Perhaps it is a very common name for English footballers, and we will therefore never know if the epileptic goalkeeper playing for Chalfont St. Peters AFC in 2008 is the same as the Jason Arday who was a goalkeeper for Battersea Park Rangers in the mid-2000s or the Dr. Jason Arday who was a goalkeeper for Lewisham Borough FC.
Fortunately I’m just someone with a laptop and a search engine, not a journalist who knows how outrageous Dr. Arday’s claims were without having to investigate them, which makes me comfortable with an assumption or two. Velocity listed both football and epilepsy in a list of apparently incredible claims alongside the marathons Dr. Arday also appears to have actually ran, so I merely found the juxtaposition of the name, position, and condition striking.
…wait.
WHAT?
What on earth are you talking about?
I’d like to politely request you withdraw this. Because my opinions wouldn’t be any different at all if Arday had been white. My larger issue here is with the British tabloid press, who, as I’ve mentioned above multiple times, have been doing this for decades. They went after Amy Whitehouse, Princess Diana, Charlotte Church, Paul Gascoigne, they hacked the voice messages of Milly Dowler. Defamatory coverage of Hillsborough.
How many of these people were Black?
The pattern of attacks here is very similar to what Goobergate uses, especially in their attacks on Zoe Q#inn, who again I’ve been very outspoken on, and who I can assure you is certainly NOT Black. Goobergate is such a vile online movement that even now I don’t use their proper name online lest I summon them to this thread.
The smear campaign on Quinn matched the very same smear campaign they did here. It involves a gish gallop of hard-to-investigate allegations that have a whiff of truth about them, but when you dig deeper, many of them have been taken out of context, or are missing nuance, or more often than not, are outright lies.
It’s a tactic I’ve learned to identify instantly. And that is exactly what we are seeing here. And that’s the reason why I’m posting about it, not because “Jason Arday was Black.” The problem is the more intense the coverage, the harder it is to unlock the truth.
Let’s take just one of the allegations made against Arday here: that he claimed he was epileptic.
That claim hits different when it’s just one of many other accusations like this:
Bolding mine.
But in isolation? Arday claims he had epilepsy. So what? What exactly am I supposed to do with that information? How am I supposed to verify it? And why does it matter?
They throw this stuff out there, and the more they throw, the harder it is to dig down and find the truth. I tried. I’m guessing others tried as well. But the search results are poisoned.
And Arday, like Quinn, is a comparative nobody. Why is a story about a comparative nobody getting around the clock press coverage? Why have we been discussing it for days now?
Because that is the entire point. They do this on purpose. Because they are assholes. Nathan Cofnas is an asshole. Cofnas is a professional racist and a professional troll. Arday wasn’t his only target. Just yesterday he accused the rector of Ghent University of “using ChatGPT.” Most of the time the trolling goes nowhere. But with Arday he “caught the big fish.” This is what professional trolls live for. He won the troll equivalent of the Olympic gold. Not only did this kick off a media firestorm, but his victim ultimately killed himself. That’s going to earn him legendary status among his peers.
We have got to be better than this. These people know what pushes our buttons.
So no, for me this has nothing to do with Jason Arday being Black. Again: I politely ask you to withdraw this rather outlandish accusation.
“Evidence” cited in the Middle East Eye article includes a couple of PR-style puff pieces and a claim by a person who says he cycled with Arday during one race, falling just a bit short of documenting “30 marathons in 35 days” by an apparent newbie runner who reported working out for “several months”. 
It must be acknowledged however that Middle East Eye is a highly respected source which employs
only the most distinguished journalists.