Arday's Law is just what we need.
A law that prevents people of any race or religion being appointed to prestigious academic jobs when:
- they did not uphold the highest academic standards in their PhD
- they fabricated claims on their CV to create Aaw bless moments at interview
- they intend to use their job to pursue some personal agenda (like preaching critical race theory, Islam/Zionism or white supremacy)
That would be great.
Only that's not what Arday's Law is actually all about.
The Spectator reports:
On Tuesday, the NUJ published a statement effectively accusing those news organisations and journalists who covered the Jason Arday story of racism
Also on Tuesday, Amnesty International issued its own statement, asserting that “Professor Arday was a victim of a brutal, racist witch hunt…Professor Arday is not the first victim of our toxic, unregulated media culture and unless there is systemic legislative change, he won’t be the last, as networks we therefore support the creation of Arday’s Law.”
There is of course no evidence that Arday was the “victim of a brutal, racist witch hunt”. He was the subject of a series of news stories who was also black. On Amnesty’s logic – and that of the NUJ – no damaging story could ever be published about a black man or woman because that would be racist.
In pushing for ‘Arday’s Law’, Amnesty is explicitly demanding legislation to shackle journalists from doing their work. The proposal for ‘Arday’s Law’ calls for “legislative action to impose limitations on the number of news articles published about a single individual within a defined time frame…The government must hold media outlets accountable for their role in amplifying potentially damaging narratives.”
'A brutal, racist witch hunt'?
This kind of language implies that the press are just a bunch of Ku Klux Klan members gearing up for a lynching, not reporting about some guy - who happened to be black but could quite as easily have been white - who got a prestigious job under rather dubious circumstances largely due to a deficient vetting process.
Arday's law - if it is ever enacted - will presumably mean that 'potentially damaging narratives' about individuals relating to the war in Ukraine (e.g. Putin), illegal immigration (e.g. Farage), the Israeli Gazacide (e.g. Netanyahu) and so on will also be subject to censure - because this is what it is.
Surely we don't need more censorship but less?
And it's the NUJ that's proposing this?