London. The British press is once again in the spotlight over its methods, this time amid accusations that its extensive coverage of plagiarism allegations against Cambridge academic Jason Arday contributed to the circumstances surrounding his death.

Arday, who was appointed in 2023 as the youngest-ever Black professor at the University of Cambridge, was found dead on Friday at the age of 41, after weeks of intense media scrutiny.

He resigned on Aug. 5, writing in his resignation letter that he had "reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure."

His family, friends and supporters have denounced what they described as a "sustained campaign of abuse", while one Cambridge professor called the coverage a "racist feeding frenzy."

Banners reading "249 articles in 22 days" were held aloft at a vigil in central London on Monday attended by thousands of people, where speaker after speaker criticized the media's role in the scandal.

"I believe the vicious media campaign drove him to his death," MP Diane Abbott, the first Black woman elected to the UK Parliament, told the vigil.

"One of the really big stories of this has been the press hounding of Jason, and how it went from being an investigation to being something quite malicious and quite personal," Michael Bankole, a politics lecturer at King's College London, told AFP.

"People close to Jason prior to his death had warned that the scale of the coverage and the tone ... was taking its toll on Jason," he said.

In an article in the right-wing Times newspaper headlined "Was it wrong to write so much about Jason Arday?" journalist Sarah Ditum defended her reporting.

She said she did not regret her coverage, arguing that she would have been "failing to do the basics of my job" had she not investigated the claims against him.

UK Newspapers Defend Their Scrutiny of Arday
Arday claimed to have been mute until age 11 and illiterate until 18, challenges that did not prevent him from earning a Ph.D. by the age of 30. He also claimed to have suffered from various medical conditions throughout his life, including autism, epilepsy, locked-in syndrome, testicular cancer, and a brain tumor. By his own account, he was a world-class endurance athlete who had run 30 marathons in 35 days, some while recovering from a fractured leg.

"Arday is easier to defend now; he can be cast as a martyr to the cruelty of the right-wing press," Ditum wrote on Monday, setting out a long list of ways in which Arday was failed by academia and his publishers, including their failure to fact-check his claims.

"He was a star ... He had chosen the spotlight," Ditum argued, acknowledging that his story had the "misfortune" of breaking during a summer news lull.

The tabloid Daily Mail's Sarah Vine blamed social media for amplifying the story.

"What began as legitimate journalistic inquiry into certain serious allegations grew into an internet pile-on," she wrote.

It had inevitably attracted "the attention of people who are genuinely racist, and that is wholly unacceptable."

The left-wing Guardian, which also conducted lengthy investigations into Arday, said in an editorial that it "sought to establish what was true. That is the proper function of journalism".

For more than a year, Guardian reporters "worked extensively to verify what (Arday) had told them. In many instances they could not."

"It is wrong that the journalists who did their job responsibly are now being subjected to an onslaught of abuse," the editorial said.

Consequences
The UK media has long faced criticism for being overly intrusive, prompting moves to curb some of its worst excesses while balancing the need to protect press freedom.

Prince Harry — who blames the press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a Paris car chase involving paparazzi — recently lost a case before a UK court alleging that the media had unlawfully gathered information about his personal life years ago.

Media watchdog IPSO, which operates a 24-hour emergency harassment helpline, said it was reviewing a flood "of complaints" about coverage of Arday.

If it found any breaches of the Editors' Code of Practice, it would take "appropriate steps," IPSO said.

It noted that the code contains "specific protections relating to privacy, harassment," including "cases involving personal grief and shock."

Media law expert Mark Stephens told AFP it was "perfectly legitimate" for the media to investigate the allegations.

"The problem is that they were warned that he was suicidal and didn't stop ... (and) if anything escalated the reporting," he said.

He added that once Arday had resigned, "What's the public interest in continuing to berate him?"

Stephens also said media lawyers were increasingly "less and less... looking at the consequences and editorial or ethics judgments."

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has called for "reflection" to determine what happened.

But more than 111,000 people had by Wednesday signed a petition by the Good Law Project, an activist group, calling for a public inquiry to "ensure a responsible press."

"Instead of getting better, press conduct is getting worse. And the impact of that failure is deadly," it said.

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