The Press Gazette has upheld its own decision to nominate Murdoch hack Jack Grove for a journalism award for his hatchet-job on Black professor Jason Arday. And to do it, it has blamed Arday for triggering the media pile-on that ultimately led to Arday’s death.
Arday, apparently, only had himself to blame because he tried to defend himself legally. He has since been repeatedly exonerated of the plagiarism of which Grove and white supremacist, ‘shit-flooding‘ Israel supporter Nathan Cofnas accused him.
‘Blame the victim’
As Newscord observed, the Gazette’s decision raises serious questions about accountability, standards and scrutiny:
Press Gazette has upheld Jack Grove’s award nomination after more than 500 complaints, while suggesting Jason Arday’s decision to use lawyers helped turn the allegations against him into a media onslaught.
It closes its response with:
“As Jack Grove wrote, if his publication had not been silenced with legal threats there is a chance this might have remained a fairly niche story about potential research malpractice. Our sympathies go out to Jason Arday’s family.”
If that paragraph makes you uneasy, we understand why. Press Gazette endorses an explanation that Arday’s decision to seek legal representation was part of why he faced an explosion of media coverage. It follows that explanation with condolences to his family.
Press Gazette acknowledges that Liverpool John Moores University rejected the plagiarism complaints. Yet it defends celebrating Grove’s article while saying the judges did not consider whether the wider coverage was proportionate.
It also draws attention to complaints appearing to use AI, via the dedicated NewsCord action campaign. All our complaint campaigns are editable. They give people a starting point to express their concerns, take action and seek accountability. Using a tool to submit a complaint does not make its substance less deserving of an answer.
Press Gazette says Grove acted “diligently and responsibly”. What checks did it carry out to support that conclusion?
While Arday’s name continues to be falsely smeared even in death, his smearers reap rewards – including, in the case of Nathan Cofnas, being hosted by Oxford University to expound his racism.
The problem is he took the coward’s way out – suicide – leaving a wife and child behind.
It’s hard to defend that.
I don’t think suicide is the coward’s way out myself at all. It is a state of mental health wherethe pain is unbearable.
Letter sent to UK Press Gazette about Groves Award Nomination and Jason Arday from Rosie Brocklehurst
CAF -Campaign for Academic Freedom – A Scandal in Plain Sight.
Prof Dave Harris, one of Jack Grove’s THS Arday story sources is involved with the Campaign for Academic Freedom (CAF) which is campaigning against DEI. Jason Arday was targeted by Harris for three years I believe, writing unsolicited questioning emails to Arday about his work. UK Press Gazette’s Editor in Chief who defends the nomination of Grove for a press award, refers to “numerous” academics as the anonymous sources for Grove’s piece. But I don’t think that is true. I think there were two – Dave Harris being one. The OU’s Martin Hammersley possibly the other. Jewish Voice for Liberation (JVL) ran a long piece by a Professor of Sociology in Education (Arday’s discipline) Miriam David. She is not named by UK Press Gazette and Grove did not seek her views even though he worked for a Higher Education newspaper. She supervises PhD’s and knows more about the history of the subject than anyone in this country . At one time she says, there was no need for a PhD to gain a Professorship in what was a new area of study. Prof. Miriam David is pretty clued up about rampant plagiarism in academia where no such pile-on has happened against white alleged plagiarists. She supports Arday as I do. Even dead he needs my support and I supported him before he died. He needs your support and there needs to be moral clarity around his case and there is none. It s far too precipitate to be dishing out awards for a story that is hardly understood even I might add, particularly by some of the journalists who covered it. The reputation of dead people matters. It matters to their family and loved ones who want answers as to why the media together acted as a pack to destroy that reputation. It matters to black academics in this country. It matters to every black child in this country who might want to enter academia and prove to the world and Nathan Cofnas that black people are not just fit for his entertainment and sport. UK media ensured this vulnerable man would die. Far less vulnerable people have succumbed to the hue and cry of newshounds scenting prey. The Campaign for Academic Freedom (which means freedom to attack DEI and black academics with impunity) gets some funding I believe from crypto-billionaire Trump friend and Restore supporter Ben Delo. Dave Harris (US academic) who Arday said had harassed him, likes to portray himself as mild-mannered . This is a classic passive aggressive cover. He is linked to CAF and referenced by them. Martin Hammersley of the OU got involved. As sources will NOT be revealed by Grove where did UK press Gazette get this ‘numerous academics’ idea from . The involvement by Arday of Carter-Ruck was to protect himself. I would have gone to solicitors in similar circumstances but not to Carter-Ruck. Carter-Ruck are libel lawyers, but they are Private-Eye’s historic nemesis. Nothing is designed more to infuriate the Eye than using them. And so it proved, for the Eye eventually did an attack job on Arday which mentioned nothing about his autism, or those two school students who were in same class and who reached out to bear witness to his childhood non-verbal learning difficulties and referenced one of their mothers who worked in pastoral care at the school and who also attested to his autism. The plagiarism allegations have been investigated and have not been held up by publishers nor by John Moores. I suspect if there were questions raised they were about cross-referencing failures. I do research and referencing on my specialism as an independent scholar in the early modern period and Shakespeare’s troupe. Failures in referencing are far too easy especially with poor sub-editing or poor academic supervision. The disproportionality of the media pile-on is dismissed by UK Press gazette’s editor in chief as a meaningless argument in the context of criteria necessary for nomination for this award. I find it hypocritical and not a little nauseating that a story about a vulnerable black academic who overcame great obstacles which should have been applauded, and who died no doubt terribly, in mental anguish and fear after a media pile on; a story that has not concluded, should be given post his death, particular credence by virtue of this media trade journal’s nomination. It is a bad decision in sick taste. I note that Nick Wallis who has done such fine work on the Fujitsu Horizon Post office scandal for which I also write and campaign, may have been unwittingly captured by the CAF lobby, as he is reported to be chairing the CAF investigation into Cambridges practices when offering academic posts. I wonder if he may have been targeted by Delo and CAF during his time at GB News and Times Radio where he was financially relieved at one time, to be offered freelance work as a presenter. The Post Office cost him more than sleepless nights. He was often paying out of his own pocket to support a Subpostmasters charity and for fares and other expenses . He like Arday has a family and a mortgage. As Head of Scandals for the upcoming Oxford Literary festival where he has presented Post Office scandal sessions in the past, Nick I hope will not remain captured, but will eventually reveal more about what lies behind CAF and DELO and this anti -DEI driven terror campaign that seems determined to ensure diversity and inclusion and equality dies in academia. That would not be a good outcome for the people of this country. It would follow the pattern advanced by Trump , Elon Musk and others in the backward administration in the USA. With so few black academics in the UK, diversity matters. Inclusivity matters for harmony of civilised society and also for disrupting far too cosy Public School trajectories into Oxbridge. Equality matters and a dead man matters more than you know. And I believe CAF , not the media they have happily manipulated, not even Cambridge necessarily, nor the THS and Grove’s nomination, is where the epicentre or this scandal truly lies.
Wish there was an editing facilty. Ben Delo gave £36 M to Reform not Restore. It is the THE (Times Higher Education) Used to be the Times Higher Education Supplement until bought by Times. Grove writes for it. Nick Wallis is leading on the investigations not chairing. Last line should be ‘of’ not ‘or’ .