Jason Arday Death Prompts Calls for New Press Inquiry After Media Storm

The death of Jason Arday, following weeks of news coverage of his life and career, has prompted calls for a new inquiry into press standards. The University of Cambridge academic faced an overwhelming volume of comment from international news organisations, broadcasters, digital-native publications and the public on social media. His family said it all had a catastrophic impact on his life.

I should underline from the start that I have enormous sympathy for what Arday went through, and my thoughts are with his family and friends. Given the demands from some politicians and pressure groups for a public inquiry into the press’s actions in reporting on Arday, it is worth looking at how newspapers covered the emergence of the plagiarism allegations against him, the claims he made about his life and career, his resignation from Cambridge, his death and the reaction to it. There is a lot of potential material to consider, and a variety of approaches could be employed.

Here, I have looked at substantive articles published in the print editions of national newspapers. I haven’t included articles published solely on newspaper websites, nor newspapers’ social media or multimedia output.