Blood Is Slower Than Ink

Arthur Reed Kimball, writing in The Atlantic in 1900, was concerned about the invasion of yellow journalism, a press turning increasingly toward sensationalized headlines and scandal for its own sake. I was interested because, you know, being on the target end of scandal wreaked immense havoc on my life. But sensationalism itself wasn’t his real target. As he put it, to lay exclusive stress on the demoralization of what is sensational is to overlook a more serious condition, the quiet journalistic invasion of so much of the intercourse and thinking of life. He meant something broader than any single scandal. He meant that the habits of the newsroom, treating people as characters, treating private lives as copy, treating guilt as a formality that story momentum could outrun, had started reshaping how ordinary people thought about each other outside the paper altogether. Guilty or innocent is downstream. The momentum is the point. Blood, it seems, is slower than ink.He wrote that before radio, decades before television, and the internet was not yet even an idea. A hundred and twenty-five years later, he would certainly recognize exactly what happened to Jason Arday, or me, or anyone who is run over before they can scream.Now, the recent story of Jason Arday is troubling and instructive. Some of what he was accused of, by his own admission, was true. Many of the details of his life of personal accomplishment and academic achievement were, apparently, exaggerated or invented outright. He was the pride of Cambridge, a storied career, a gentle effete, a man of accomplishment and grace, and also a young man of color. With his long braids, smooth dark skin, he was a compelling figure in the lofty world of academia. Maybe someone had suspicions and said nothing. Maybe his charm and his kindness were equally disarming. Whatever the case, the accusations piled fast, and piled hard. And the press came a knock’n.I don’t want to repeat all of the accusations, they are reported at length elsewhere. But, a brief overview: there were questions raised about passages in his doctoral thesis that resembled earlier academic work. Liverpool John Moores University investigated and upheld his doctorate, and Arday denied plagiarism, although he acknowledged errors in his doctoral work. Further reporting raised questions about some positions and affiliations on his CV, the scale of his charity fundraising, some of his extraordinary athletic claims, and other episodes he had described publicly. The university eventually announced an investigation after receiving what it called “new information” regarding his qualifications and academic conduct; Jesus College separately said it had begun disciplinary proceedings after finding inconsistencies in information supplied by Arday.Even his famous childhood story has been disputed. Several people who knew Arday as a child told journalists that they remembered him speaking and joking when young. But other former classmates and adults who knew him supported his account, remembering a child with serious learning difficulties who communicated little or not at all verbally. Who knows for sure, but the evidence suggests things weren’t quite as they were presented. Okay.Earlier this month, the scrim of inconsistencies kept tearing and some of the strange details of his life became visible, fresh fodder for the media. It got ugly fast. He resigned from Cambridge, writing in his resignation letter: “The response from so many people across the world was overwhelming. Thousands celebrated not simply my appointment, but what it represented: that talent, perseverance and hope can triumph over even the greatest adversity.”Some of the evidence that caused his fall is inconclusive. His claims about marathon feats didn't hold up against what elite athletes said was physically possible, and no records supported them. But other parts of the case were less clean than they first appeared: a university that investigated the plagiarism charge, cleared him outright, then called it an "aberration" and cited "new information" without ever spelling out what that meant. Competing accounts from people who knew him as a child. None of it added up to what it was made to sound like. I’m not going to toil over every detail, surely there will be many discussions about Arday in the years ahead. However, Jason Arday won’t be part of those. He died last week, at the young age of 41; I assume it was self-induced, but that’s not been announced. It seems certain that Arday created more than one story about himself, some of it very clearly was invented. But, on a personal note, he was by many accounts a kind, generous, and gentle human being. He had a family, and frie