Media Storm - Jason Arday: Anatomy of a media storm

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! This episode deals with themes of suicide. If you are struggling, Samaritans are available free, day and night, on 116 123. This episode is about Jason Arday. Never has a story encapsulated the words ‘media storm’ so well.   It is not intended to add to the storm, but to critically analyse how an accusation of plagiarism against Arday made by Nathan Cofnas, a man with extremely racist views (though no mainstream media outlet described them as such) managed to make so many front pages. Jason Arday was a 41-year-old academic, and the youngest ever Black professor at Cambridge University. He was found dead on Friday 14th August at his home in London, following weeks of intense media scrutiny of many aspects of his qualifications and personal life by the majority of the UK press establishment – both on the Right and the Left. In media articles about Jason Arday’s life, and his death, you’ll read that the professor “found himself at the centre of a plagiarism row”. But the story is far deeper than this. It’s a story about who gets a voice in our national press, a media intent on villainization, and a racist narrative about diversity allowed to run wild. This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  It was edited by⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Christy Callaway-Gale⁠⁠⁠⁠ The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠@mediastormpod⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please note, this episode deals with themes of suicide. If you are struggling, Samaritans are available free day and night on 116, 123. We've never had a more requested episode and never has something encapsulated the words Media Storm so well. Today, we want to talk about Jason Ardei, not in a way that adds to the noise, but in a way that offers insights into the mistakes of the media, both right and left, and helps us to look forward towards solutions to help prevent a media storm like this from happening again. Jason Ardei was a 41-year-old academic. In 2023, the then-37-year-old sociologist became the youngest ever Black professor at Cambridge. He was found dead on the 14th of August at his home in London, apparently by suicide, following weeks of scrutiny of many aspects of his qualifications and personal life

by the majority of the UK press establishment. Jason Ardei is not the first example of someone who, after sustained media attention, appears to have taken their own life. In 2012, the male published articles about a primary school teacher called Lucy Meadows, who was transitioning. They wrote, He is not only in the wrong body, he's in the wrong job,

and wrote that Meadows was not entitled to project his personal problems onto impressionable young children. After Meadows died by suicide, the coroner accused sections of the press of character assassination, ridicule and humiliation, and told journalists at the inquest,

shame, shame on all of you. He even said that without change, similar conduct could lead to further fatality. That was 14 years ago. In 2014, Sky News confronted Brenda Leyland outside her home about a series of negative and abusive tweets she had written concerning the parents of Madeline McCann. Layland took her life two days after the report was televised and the coroner later formally recorded that she had recently been upset by public exposure in the media.

I'm Martin Brunt from Sky News. Well, I'm just about to go out. We caught you. Can we talk to you about your Twitter? No. Handle and your attacks on the McCannes? No. There was, of course, also Caroline Flack, ex-Love Island host. Before her suicide in 2020,

allegations surrounding abuse in her relationship garnered significant tabloid coverage. Surrounded by photographers as she arrived at court accused of assaulting her boyfriend. Coroner findings identified press attention surrounding the trial as an acute factor in the deterioration of her mental health. These are three very different cases

with different levels of public interest. But each case raises questions about the role journalism plays when it turns human failure into clickbait, culture war, fodder. In media articles about Jason Rade's life and his death, you'll read that the professor found himself at the center of a plagiarism row.

But the story is far deeper than this. It's a story about Who gets a voice in our national press, a media intent on villainisation, and a racist narrative allowed to run free? So how did one man and one accusation of plagiarism become front-page news? Jason Ardey, the former Cambridge professor, has been found dead. He, quote, reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure. This feels like a witch hunt.

Have to trace learned nothing? The vicious media campaign drove him to... Welcome to Media Storm's Newswatch, helping you get your head around the headlines. I'm Mattelna Mallinson and I'm Helena Wadia. This week's News Watch, anatomy of a media storm. Jason Arde's death. It begins with a man called Nathan Koffness.

Nathan Koffness held a fellowship in Cambridge University's Faculty of Philosophy and was a college research associate at Emmanuel College. What you need to know about Nathan Koffness that was left out of much media coverage was that in 2024, Koffner's had his research associate post terminated at Emmanuel College for challenging the college's core values and mission. This is because Koffner's published an essay called A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution. In this essay, he said black people would distinguish. disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment if we lived

in a meritocracy and called for a hereditarian revolution which would see the eradication of DEI, which is diversity, equity and inclusion schemes and affirmative action policies. Essentially, he believes that black people are less intelligent than white people and he often harks back to eugenics. On one podcast, he was laughing with the host and said, after the revolution, I'll be the head of eugenics and race science at Harvard. I'm still waiting for the revolution to happen and then I'll get another job. After the revolution, I'll be the head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard. Eugenics is the unscientific belief that the human population can be improved through selective breeding.

The idea was coined in 1883 by British scientist Francis Galton, who differentiated between people with desirable and undesirable traits. This was based on racism, prejudice, and a flawed understanding of genetics to target marginalised groups, often black people, and it was favoured by the Nazis. It led to massive human rights abuses before being widely rejected after World War II. Now, even though Kofness was terminated from his post at King, which he was hired by a Belgian university, Ghent, a post that he held until about a week ago. Following Jason Arday's death, Koffens was suspended from his post.

About a month ago, Nathan Koffness wrote a substack post about Jason Rade. Kofness repeatedly accuses Ardei of plagiarism, goes on many podcasts talking about it, whilst also pushing his own anti-D-EI agenda. So last year, Liverpool John Moore's University, which awarded Jason Rade's, PhD, investigated the allegations of plagiarism and dismissed them, saying they were likely the result of, quote, honest and reasonable error in citations. This is very different to plagiarism. Ardey admitted making citation errors and apologised, but he denied lying. Cambridge University stated publicly that the plagiarism allegations had been thoroughly investigated by the relevant

institutions and that Arde had been cleared by those investigations of any wrongdoing. But Kofnes' accusations incited a pile on from the media. Yet very few media outlets detailed who Nathan Kofness was, what his views were, and the fact that he had previously lost his job over those views. In fact, to avoid calling this man racist, the BBC labelled him a self-defined race realist. The Guardian also quoted him directly, labelling him the American anti-woke blogger. Other outlets called him controversial. They also did not mention that Coffinus had called Jason Ardei illiterate and mentally disabled and the R word and had used derogatory terms such as blacks.

The truth is this reveals something about the right-wing infosphere and the inside connections that drive coverage within it. Kofnus operates inside the online hereditarian or race science ecosystem that publishes largely through Substack, self-publishes, is amplified by the Free Speech Union and then laundered by mainstream outlets like The Telegraph who turn his personal vendetta into the story of the summer without ever quite owning where it came from. These outlets, which also included the spectator, spiked daily skeptic, do not hold themselves to a bar of rigorous original reporting. Actually, they do not even hold themselves to a bar of any original reporting,

nor do they really hold themselves up to the bar of using fact-checked impartial content to recycle, not if it ideologically suits them, because Kofnas was highly agenda-led, not only by his racism, but also by his rejection by Emanuel College, Cambridge. He had a direct grievance against both Cambridge University and its minority. professors who now held more prestige than him. Not examining who this story came from, why it came about and what the person's agenda was is the first problem our media fell into. The press loves a villain. Nathan Kovnis' claims of plagiarism in Arde's work in a substack post were then dissected and in most cases treated as vindicated without further investigation.

in more than 200 articles across the majority of the British press in weeks that followed, both in print and online. To be specific, it was 249 articles in 22 days, 188 of which were in nine days. On the 24th of July, Koffness's substack posts was followed by Gordon Rayner's article in the Daily Telegraph, detailing the plagiarism allegations. The title? Cambridge's diversity poster boy in plagiarism row.

Until now, the article read, the row had been happening away from public view, but the publication of a blog this week has brought it out into the open. The Telegraph is therefore admitting that they have used Coffness as a source, but not once mentioned Coffness's name or views on race in this article. An unreliable source published something on social media, within hours the telegraph blasted it into the mainstream. Is this journalistic integrity?

What followed was headline after headline dubbing Ardei Professor Plagiarism and Cambridge's Diversity Darling. Right-wing figures like Edward Dutton tweeted every single day about him saying it was a cover-up and that this story is British academia's equivalent of the Pakistani grooming gangs. The most articles were written by the Times or the Sunday, Times, followed by the Telegraph, the Daily Mail Online, the Independent, the Spectator, and then The Guardian.

The Times also ran adverts, promoting their headlines about Jason Ardei across social media. On X, formerly Twitter, an ad was running promoting an article with the headline, I was Jason Rday student, he was late to class and spouted nonsense. They paid for this story to reach as many people as possible. data shows it reached nearly 200,000 people, and the advert continued to run after his death. This means the targeting of Ardei was not just an editorial decision, but a commercial one.

And as we've spoken about many times on Media Storm, outrage is amplified because it attracts clicks, and clicks make money. And you can tell from that headline about Arde's lateness that stories didn't stop but his alleged plagiarism. They extended to his personal. personal life. Now, in journalism, there's something called the public interest rule, which means that if you're sharing something that is private or exposing a crime or exposing corruption,

you can override typical privacy rules as long as it's in the public interest. Now, there is a question to be asked here about public interest reporting, and some of this area is in the grey zone, because Jason Ardei was publishing a personal memoir with a major publishing house. and the Guardian claims its journalists tried and failed to verify several of his stories in the memoir. And while Cambridge University rejected the plagiarism allegations, they did later open an investigation into certain resume claims, but this investigation has not concluded, and as we'll get into more,

none of our day's questioned claims can be stated as proven falsehoods. A public interest story here may have been, how rigorously is Simon and Schuster and comparable publishers, fact-checking the memoirs they publish? But instead, the media played to its audiences cheapest, basest, most monetizable instincts, and went for a personal take-down. And the personal mockery of Jason Orde extended well beyond any feasible public interest claim. from his charity fundraising and semi-professional football career to his autism and his childhood developmental difficulties, every part of his life was picked apart. It was often highly gratuitous, and while it may be interesting to the public, that does not make it in the public interest. For example, when Ardei resigned, for reasons we'll get on to, the Times reported that his resignation note may have been AI written.

Just imagine the pitch meeting at the times in which this article was conceived, reporters like throwing ideas at their hungry editors who were just demanding ways to keep the bandwagon rolling. Even in the moment a visibly distressed man is stepping away, how can we deny him a dignified exit? In the same bracket of time, Aaron Bustani of Navarra Media tweeted a scarface meme parodying Netflix's five-part dramatization of the J-Cast.

in our day story. This is how much. Is it? Big number. Yeah. This is not journalism. This is bullying. Almost none of the coverage involved original reporting.

It was pure commentary by a media class who counts itself above criticism because of its public interest criteria, a criteria it repeatedly fails to live up to. And I really want to acknowledge one thing in particular which really made my journalistic, spidey senses tingle. It's from the original article in The Guardian also quoted elsewhere about how Arde's story of being nonverbal until he was 11 must be rubbish because testimony from quote-unquote schoolmates say that he spoke, joked with, sung with them while he was at school. This is terrible reporting in two key ways. If you remember our episode on how the media reports on cases of fatal domestic abuse,

you'll remember me saying that I go into newsrooms and I train journalists on how to report responsibly on this topic. And one thing we always say is, when a woman is killed at the hands of her male partner or ex-partner, never get quotes from neighbours or so-called friends of the perpetrator because abuse is very nuanced and can often hide in plain sight. And there are many types of abuse that can lead up to fatal domestic violence and it may not be physical. It may not be something you can see as a neighbour or a friend. And here it's the same. There is a complete lack of understanding that these random schoolmates who are recalling their childhood memories may not have an understanding of the nuances of autism. Autistic children and those with selective mutism or severe communication difficulties can speak in some settings whilst remaining silent in others.

And there was a huge lack of understanding of the nuances of autism in this very able to. reporting. But it is because once the plagiarism allegation was out there, it was much easier to seize on the narrative that Ardei had fabricated his entire life story and was some kind of, and I'll use words that were literally printed in the media, fraud, fabulous, fantasist, essentially countless unproven or even disproven allegations circulated as fact. Media articles about his life were being read already through the lens of dishonesty. There's literally nothing that he has not done or overcome, including speaking for the first time at age 11, reading for the first time at 18, running 600 miles in six days, 30 marathons in 30 days. Now today, the memoir version

of all of his tall tales comes out, including new claims about a suicide attempt. Earlier, I said that there were 249 articles in 22 days. What's important to note is that the majority of articles about Jason Ardei were written between his resignation and his death. On the 5th of August, Ardee resigned from the University of Cambridge and his post at Jesus College. He said in a statement, while criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement. The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and those I love.

He continued, this decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first bought me to Cambridge, nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me. It is simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure. And this brings us onto the second thing to say on the question of public interest. The public interest justification by which editors green lit the cover. was not, as later claimed, that he was an influential academic. Instead, the justification was directly given in the chosen headlines, to quote, Cambridge's diversity poster boy in plagiarism row.

The public interest justification was that he could be conceived of as a symbol for DEI. He was black, and more dangerously, he was successful and black. And because DEI is now an active Trumpian culture war, that means successful minority, are all legitimate public interest targets, whether or not they claim to be public figures. That is a nasty, dangerous, racialised public interest landscape in which minorities have to overcome layismal scrutiny, not just to succeed, but to survive. In other words, it's exactly why DEI was needed in the first place. And also, I don't think Jason Ardei was this huge public figure. He was an academic, and I think it's fair to say not widely known outside the academic sphere.

Even if there were legitimate questions about Arde's work and his appointment at Cambridge, I find it hard to accept that the subsequent media hounding that involved every other aspect of his private life was in the public interest. Instead, it seemed like the media seized upon with glee an opportunity to take down diversity and inclusion schemes. They were waiting in the wings, and this was their perfect opportunity. I do think there is a general soggy culture in academic circles these days, which doesn't really care so much about the old things like being able to tell an incredibly clear argument or making an original contribution to thought. They don't care about those things so much as are the morals in the right place,

are the politics in the right place, and is the person who's written it, do they have enough protected characteristics? And those things cannot work together. Prioritising the latter set will inevitably undermine the excellence, the rigour and the knowledge production. One way you can tell that race was a significant factor at play here is to use comparative coverage. An example, three years ago, Cambridge Professor Dr William O'Reilly

was found to have plagiarised his own students' work and even threatened the student. But only six articles were written about, him in the UK press. And that's probably the most direct comparison, but there are also comparisons to be drawn to professors at Cambridge who have done far more serious things than making citation mistakes. Simon Goldhill, a former professor of Greek literature and culture in the Classics Department,

resigned from Cambridge in June after accusations of sexual assault and misconduct against him were upheld. This man was found to have kissed and touched the chest of one female student without consent and groped another two female students without consent. I would actually like a media frenzy about that, please. But I counted four articles in the mainstream media and a few more in the Cambridge tab. The Times led with world-leading classicist

resigns after sexual misconduct investigation. There was also Dr Peter Hutchinson, a Cambridge academic who was found to have sexually harassed 10 students, He was readmitted to his college, less than two years after it was announced he had been permanently removed. I counted 14 mainstream media articles. And we had to go searching for those stories. If anything, we should know the names Simon Goldhill and Peter Hutchinson. But instead, we know Jason Arde.

And even if we assume for a moment that every allegation against Ardei is true, the media attention given to those alleged wrongdoings is not. not proportional to the wrongdoings of Goldhill and Hutchinson. See, Ardei did not get treated like other imperfect academics who'd made mistakes. He was used as an example as to why all black academics must be suspect. He was made to represent his entire race. His perceived failures were magnified. The ones of white people before him were minimised.

And this has been further highlighted as prominent black figures who defended Jason Arde publicly are under attack themselves. As just one example, author Nels Abbey defended Ardei live on Times Radio on the 1st of August. He read out part of Liverpool John Moore's University's investigation letter, which found Arde's plagiarism claims to be not proven. In an article published days later, the spectator then described Nels as having chaired the university's investigation into Arde's thesis and implied he had overseen the outcome of the initial plagiarism allegation. The media, particularly the right-wing media in this case, seized upon the narrative to criticize the problem with diversity initiatives.

The spectator wrote, DEI must die to prevent another Jason Ardei scandal. Darkly ironic. The narrative was written that diversity is pushing white people who really deserve roles out of jobs. And yet when Arde was appointed, Cambridge had been exposed for having 75 black academics out of 6,1,18. That's barely 1.2% people and it was 0.3% of all their professors. In 2016, a damning report came out which showed some Cambridge University colleges admitted zero black students or have accepted as few as one a year between 2012 and 2016. So Cambridge also had a role in this.

Their appointment of the youngest ever black professor was also a way for them to promote their supposed commitment to racial equality. Very few media outlets bothered to explain the nuances of diversity, equity and inclusion. Instead, sweeping statements that were used either gave the perception of or outright said that all diversity schemes do

is give people of colour roles that they don't deserve. The Black Studies scholar Cahinda Andrews described the press criticism against our day as, quote, a dedicated coordinated smear campaign from the right, based on the premise that black people should not be at Cambridge. I agree with that statement, but I would add something else.

It was not just the right. True. If we examine how outlets reacted to Jason Rade's death, we might expect this from right-wing outlets. The Spectator. Headlines read, the Floydification of Jason Arde's death. And the media didn't kill Jason Rade. In the articles, they defend their coverage as,

simply reporters asking questions about a professor's CV. Bear in mind, by the way, that on August 10th, four days before Ardey was found dead, the spectator ran an article titled, Has the hounding of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor gone too far? Just in case you wanted to know who gets afforded grace at that publication. The Telegraph ran with The Tragedy of Jason Ardei can't be blamed on the press. The Sunday Times, two days after Arde's death, they wrote, Jason Ardee may one day come to be judged either a fool or knave for those who employed him

either cunning manipulators of his innocence or willing dupes to a world-class con artist. Or there is a third possibility that Ardei turns out to be a world-class proponent of storytelling specialising in what might be called black grifter chic. They go on to say, and this was two days after his death, that the enslavement of black people taught them to be liars. After backlash to this extremely racist trope, the Black Grifter Sheik line was quietly left out of the digital article. The Times also appear to have backdated the article to the 12th of August before Arde's death. Also in the Times, columnist Sarah Dittem said she did not regret her reporting on Ardei as ignoring high-profile claims would mean failing to do her job.

On Sarah Dittem's piece, I want to add something, especially after hearing you just lay out what the Times did. Dittem's piece was so reflective of, the mirror, the media refuses to hold up to itself. She also wrote for the free press, an article titled, The Press Didn't Kill Jason Ardey, arguing institutional failure, not journalism, is what demands accountability. Institutional failure can belong to the mainstream media because the mainstream media, or sorry, legacy media, is an institution whatever you want to call it.

Journalists' literal job is to spot institutional failure, but with Ardei, they opted for personal takedown and remained blind to their own institutional failure in doing so. Absolutely. So that's the right wing and, as I said, what we might expect from them. Yet the left-wing press failed to take accountability either. After our day's death, The Guardian wrote an editorial reflecting on their coverage. The Guardian sought to establish what was true, it said.

It was right for the Guardian to publish its investigation, and it is wrong that the journalists who did their job responsibly are now being subjected to an onslaught of abuse. In its journalism, the Guardian sought to meet tests of importance and proportionality covering the issue with nuance. This could not be said of much of the right-wing media and its social media outriders. End quote. Between the 24th of July and Arde's death,

the Spectator published just over 20 articles about Ardei. But The Guardian published 19. And while some of the original reporting may hold up under public interest scrutiny, the tirade of articles that follow do not. Yeah, this editorial in The Guardian, painting itself as the arbiters of truth, and the right-wing press as a feeding frenzy, ignores the core issue of public interest journalism.

It doesn't acknowledge whether multiple articles and front pages about a largely unknown academic was proportional. It also does nothing to take accountability for their own reporting, which sometimes blurred the quality of evidence against Ardei. As an example, Arday's claim to have helped raise £5 million for charity was widely ridiculed by papers, including The Guardian. Yet Ardei always said that the money had been raised through many fundraising collectives over a two-decade period. He had, for the most part, repeatedly described his fundraising in collective terms,

referring as early as 2009 to what we had raised and later been part of fundraising initiatives and to our fundraising projects. Yet these claims were blurred and then printed as dishonesties by papers across the political spectrum. The first article in The Telegraph about Jason Arde's plagiarism questions was published on the 24th of July. The Guardian did not start its onslaught of publishing until over a week later on the 1st of August. Some could say that the Guardian's joining in turned the story from a typical right-wing culture war into something seen as more legitimate. Also not acknowledged by The Guardian was the fact that its editor, Catherine Viner, and its head of national news, Archie Bland, were both warned.

by multiple close friends of our days that their planned coverage was having a profound effect on his mental health. And if you're thinking, well, how really left-wing is the Guardian anyway? You might be shocked that Navarra media's coverage, which to many is seen as left as left can be, also borrowed from right-wing talking points.

Navarra added commentary upon commentary, but did not critically analyse whether the story was worth covering or where the story had come from. Take a listen to this. I know you were saying you were listening to a podcast with this guy earlier. I was watching a lecture with this guy earlier. If he was ever considered the best in the world in this discipline,

the discipline has a problem. Yeah. Because I watched half of a 40-minute lecture, and it was just word salad and nothing was said. It felt like I was in a kind of HR talk where someone was just phoning it in. Yeah, so buzzwordy. Buzzwordy.

Aaron Bustani, co-forking. founder of Navarra was also tweeting about the story furiously. On August 7th, he wrote, Watch this presentation by Jason Arday at UCL. He says nothing for over 40 minutes. This is a conman. He also tweeted a GIF on August 7th, joking that Netflix would be buying the rights to make the five-part dramatization of the Jason Ardei story, essentially piling on the claims by the press that Arday's life was fictionalized and outlandish. A few days after Ardae's death. Bastani released an apology video in which he said, professionally I erred, but ethically, and that's what I really care about. I really screwed up.

And I want to say on this, apologising was the right thing to do and a lot of outlets didn't do it. But it's a real shame Bastani made his own apology just so hard to believe. I saw it. The right wing media saw it mocking the video as a hostage video, a quote, Soviet show trial, a Maoist struggle session that spectator and spiked. I mean, I never thought that I would agree with the spectator, but hostage video is a perfect way to describe this apology video. It fell insincere. But why? Because it moved in lockstep with commercial and audience pressure rather than actual changing circumstances in the days after Jason Arde died. Bostani first posted a long thread defending his coverage.

legitimacy. As far as I can tell, the only thing that changed between his thread and his later apology was that his audience turned on him. So why did the left join this feeding frenzy? To me, this is just generally reflective of attitudes in the legacy media that even left-leaning outlets are reluctant to acknowledge that they are part of the problem. The need for a villain is just so systemic in the media that maybe there's just no difference. I also think there's this compulsion within some classed as left, not to be seen as like, oh, the bad lefties, but to be seen as like the good lefties. So they jump on the bandwagon of stories like this that can up their credentials as not being too woke. In Bastani's tweets, there were a lot of

those sort of right-wing tropes terms like the liberal intelligentsia, as if, you know, he doesn't totally represent whatever that trope is supposed to be categorizing. So I think that Where we've seen this coverage coming in heavily from the left, it is part of that need to present themselves as not too woke and the acceptable sort of rank of the left. I also think that the left has to look at how it reported on Jason Arde before Koffner's threw this story into the limelight. They lauded Ardei as a hero for being the youngest ever black professor.

They heroised him and did not scrutinise whether Cambridge had made any structural and systemic reform in the many years that had passed since Cambridge was first called out about a lack of diversity and discrimination towards black people. The left has allowed the right to frame diversity and inclusion on its own terms.

For all the talk of preferential treatment for non-white people in academia, it actually is a reality that there are clear systemic barriers for black students. Yet the left-wing media allowed Arde to be representative of his entire race and allowed this case

to be used to undermine other black professors and academics. So what now? Analysis done by NewsCord showed that almost every outlet published fewer articles in the nine days after Arde's death than in the nine days between his resignation and death. Is this a symbol of self-reflection or a symbol of a news cycle moving on without self-reflection? We have seen a demand for change. Press regulator Ipso, which oversees the majority of, of the UK's national newspapers is reviewing a high volume of complaints and concerns in relation

to the coverage of Ardei following his death. Complaints have been filed to Ipso about specific Daily Mail Times, Telegraph, Sun, Spectator and Guardian articles under Clause 1, accuracy of the editor's Code of Practice. And the Good Law Project has filed a petition to the Prime Minister for a public inquiry into press conduct, stating that self-regulation, of the press has comprehensively failed. I'd like to think that the UK media can learn lessons from their hounding of Jason Arday, but I was swiftly reminded that they probably won't

because five days after his death, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that they were moving back to the UK. Cued the headlines. The Sunday Times writes, Harry and Megan are back to shower us with more victimhood. The Guardian writes, hard to fathom exactly why Megzer is over

and the self-exiled wonder generators are leaving California. Luckily, internet sleuths are on the case. Do not forget that Meghan Markle, a prominent black figure, spoke of her own suicidal thoughts following negative press attention. I mean, do you think the media can ever change? I think that there are parts of our media industry that will not ever change. I mean, you mentioned Caroline Flack in the introduction,

the Love Island presenter who died by suicide while facing, saturated tabloid fascination, right, at a female celebrity's downfall. Her death produced the Bekind backlash and that lasted, what, five minutes. However, I think people can change the media and I think the media is being forced to change. There are a number of factors in this, right? The commercial ad-funded clickbait model is not going to survive very long. That is largely because of the internet, because of AI. News websites simply aren't getting the click-through. they need and adverts on their pages are really worth so little these days that it isn't going to survive. That means the only media that will survive is media that can prove to its

readers and audiences that it is worth funding. I think we are shifting towards a subscriber-funded model. Audiences may have to start thinking about paying for the news they care about, but that gives them power to choose the media that does it right. And that's what I mean when I say, I do think people can change the media. You guys just have to. you choose and support the media outlets that are trying to get it right? That's exactly right. We can change how we engage with the media. We can stop being passive and we can stop consuming clickbait.

And on that note, we'd just like to highlight a few media outlets who are doing good work, reporting on Jason R day, and crucially, the wider questions is life and death create for society. Byline Times led a six-month investigation about Cambridge University, prior to the Jason R-Dade Media Storm, which revealed a Cambridge professor, James Orr, is Nigel Farage's head of policy at Reform UK. Byline Times have put to Cambridge the extensive findings of his activities at the university,

including concerns around the safeguarding of students. That investigation is linked in the show notes. We'd also like to highlight the work of NewsCord, who did initial analysis on the volume of articles published about Ardei and Black Current News, which is the substack of Nadine White, which has highlighted the abuse against black journalists and figures who have vocally stood up for our day. There's also a brilliant substack by the journalist Nadine Bachelor Hunt,

titled Long-established Institutions are never good at holding themselves to account. The British media is no different. All those links are in the show notes. Thank you for listening. Next week, we're looking at care workers and the crisis in the care sector, a workforce the UK depends on and refuses to see. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-out to everyone in our Patreon community already.

We appreciate you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends and obviously leave us a five-star rating and a review. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helen Awadiya, and follow the show via at MediaStormPod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. It was edited by Christy Calloway Gale.

The music is by Sam Fire.