No, Jason Arday Wasn't the Media's Fault
Blaming a suicide on correct reporting unfortunately makes perfect sense in this reality-challenged era.
From the BBC:
Public figures and friends of Jason Arday have called for a public inquiry into media coverage surrounding the former Cambridge professor before his death. Labor MP Diane Abbott and actress Jameela Jamil are among 30,000 signatories of a letter to the prime minister, which claims Arday’s death followed “two weeks of relentless harassment.”
The letter issued by group Good Law Project — which had been representing Arday after he stood down from his Cambridge role amid a plagiarism row — said many of its signatories had warned media outlets about the intensity of their reporting. Lord Woolley, principal of Homerton College at Cambridge, said Arday had been subjected to a “vicious witch hunt.”
Metropolitan Police admitted in early August it was a mistake to investigate reporter Jack Grove for four months just for reviewing then-Cambridge professor Jason Arday’s record. After Arday was found dead by suicide Friday, that mistake will likely be compounded by an inquiry into what London mayor Sadiq Khan called “pernicious public shaming” by media. Cambridge Chancellor Lord Chris Smith likewise said it was important tend to questions of “academic integrity,” but also to refuse to give in to a “racist feeding frenzy.”
Al Jazeera already called Arday’s suicide “institutional murder,” and Ibram Kendi has already produced a headline in the Emancipator saying the media “lynched” him. Across the world, politicians, pundits, and activists have sounded the same note, denouncing the press for driving Arday to kill himself.
Bollocks. I’m all for beating up media, but in this case? The Arday story will be debated as a race matter, but the story is really about a deeper problem, the institutional rejection of reality itself, which at Cambridge was once celebrated in the form of Isaac Newton’s apple tree.
Once he was caught in the jaws of media scandal, Arday did become a symbol, only not of race. A strategic decision was made by politicians, pundits, and institutions like Cambridge to try to massacre fact through innuendo and sheer obstinacy. This was the dystopian beyond-arrogance of a political school whose exploding popularity around the world is rooted in a religious belief in transcendence — of science, economics, foreign policy, history, art, and a hundred other things. After centuries of agreement, we’re now being told apples can freeze in mid-air, if so ordered:
