Jason Arday was allegedly (we always need this qualifier these days), a Cambridge professor of sociology who recently resigned from his post following allegations of plagiarism in his work and intense media scrutiny of some his more outlandish biographical claims. Shortly after resigning, he – again allegedly killed himself.
Those are the bare bones of the story. It’s all you need to know.
I’m not going to discuss the rest in detail, because that’s just what they want. A dissection, adherence to a side, disputing the elusive minutiae.
Plagiarism, racism, classism, and fantasism.
It’s a melange of topics guaranteeing heated debate, and it’s all anyone one wants to talk about – from politicians to journalists to celebrities in every sphere. So much so it almost makes you question the essential ‘organicness’ of the situation entirely, especially with the dubious hallmark of the shockingly speedy GoFundMe.
I’m not going to get into all of that now, or try to untangle the roots of the story or distill some kind of reality quotient.
However real the component parts are, the media hysteria is very real and that’s the part that is concerning me.
Yesterday, “tens of thousands” of people gathered in Trafalgar Square for a vigil for the dead academic.
A change.org petition is calling for “Arday’s Law” to be introduced, to protect individuals from “media harm” – it’s only at ~3000 signatures so far, but it’s a weathervane none the less.
More troubling is the Good Law Project’s petition – over 110,000 signatories so far – calling for a full, public inquiry into the media’s treatment of Jason Arday, and containing the line:
Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed.
…this is rather tired “more power to government” propaganda. After all, if the media isn’t trusted to regulate itself – who else is there?
Of course the sentiment is laughable, because the media DOES NOT regulate itself, state and corporate interests regulate it. All the time. It’s absurd to even discuss the media, the state and big business as separate entities. This is like the right hand complaining that “left-hand self regulation has failed”.
But it suits the state, the media itself – and, right now, the Good Law Project I suppose – to pretend that isn’t true, so they can campaign for what will inevitably be some kind of increase in censorship.
That’s the angle right now, and whether this whole thing is a psy-op with this aim from the beginning, or it’s a real event seized opportunistically by a power structure sensing an easy win, doesn’t really matter from that perspective.
(UKR)
