We should never need a death to remind us of that.
But here we are again - this time it’s Jason Arday.
We need to be capable of holding two truths at the same time.
He had questions to answer. Serious ones. The allegations against him deserved scrutiny. That is what journalism is supposed to do.
But there is a difference between holding someone to account and hounding them.
Day after day, story after story, allegation after allegation - the coverage, particularly from the Daily Mail, felt relentless. At times it even crossed into push-notification territory, the kind usually reserved for breaking national emergencies.
At what point does legitimate scrutiny become a pile-on? When does informing the public tip into feeding a spectacle?
Jason Arday wasn’t just a headline or a scandal. He was a 41-year-old man - a father, a partner, a son, a brother. And tonight, his family is grieving him.
We do not know the cause of his death, and it would be completely wrong to suggest media coverage caused it. But there are questions to answer. I also think the academic world must answer these too.
But we can still ask uncomfortable questions about how we treat people once they become the story. Because haven’t we been here before?
After Caroline Flack died, there was soul-searching. We talked about pile-ons and the human cost of relentless scrutiny. ‘Be Kind’ was everywhere. We said we’d learned. And yet here we are again.
I used to be a tabloid journalist. I’ve been part of that machine and seen how it works from the inside. I’ve come to realise how easily “public interest” gets blurred with public appetite, clicks, and momentum.
I’m still a journalist, thankfully no longer in the tabloids. But I still believe in journalism. I still believe in holding people and institutions to account. Sometimes that means publishing things people don’t want published, asking difficult questions, exposing wrongdoing.
But public interest is not the same as public appetite. There has to be proportionality. There has to be humanity. Accountability should never become punishment.
And alleged wrongdoing should never become a licence for millions of people to watch someone’s life unravel in real time.
Whatever the truth ultimately is about Jason Arday’s death, I hope his family is given the privacy, dignity, and space to grieve.
And I hope we don’t do what we always do - talk about kindness for a few days, nod along, promise change… and then forget it all the moment the next name becomes a headline.
Because there is always a human being behind it.
⏩Patricia Devlin is an award winning investigative journalist.
If, say, the media started reporting on everything Jeffrey Donaldson had done after he was sentenced, relentlessly publishing story after story about him, and he subsequently took his own life, would Patricia or others have the same sympathy for Jeffrey and question whether he had been hounded by the press?
ReplyDeleteI thought about that last night on hearing the news.
DeleteThere are people who demand capital punishment for child rapists but none demanding it for plagiarisers or con artists. A unionist friend said to me yesterday that the noose was what Donaldson needed. I guess many wish Donaldson would whereas nobody seems to have wished it for Arday. The outcome is not judged to fit the crime.
In the case of Donaldson, it seems everybody has turned on him including the DUP and unionism in general, and went for his jugular. Probably best explained by the heinous nature of his crimes. The right have gone for Arday with a vigour and viciousness lacking when other targets cross their field of vision. something Laura McAtackney and Angela Doire flagged up pretty clearly in separate social media posts earlier.
But I also think if the Left had been doing its job, pulled its head out of the Woke god's butt and avoided utilising Animal Farm standards of judgement, the Right would not have stolen a march.
I don't believe the media should self censor in either case. But Patricia draws an important distinction between public appetite and public interest. The question she raises is what was being sated here - interest or appetite? Her call is for Arday to have been investigated not immolated. And the right wing media seem to have been gathering at his door with both torches and an agenda. So, I think if it were a matter of hounding Donaldson for a partisan purpose Patricia would oppose it. And she would not welcome his suicide.
I think it is quite sad that a guy dies over this. It is easy to empathise with his situation, the clearly unbearable pressure he was under. I feel the paradox is that it was as unnecessary as it was unavoidable. And not a paradox that I find easy to resolve,
Which makes the point raised by you a good one which will require greater reflection all round.
Hear, hear Patricia.
ReplyDelete