Derek Miers

New analysis on UK media: British media is not delivering the news to its readers. They are delivering an agenda. The seven days after Channel 4 filmed James Orr are a damning indictment of the British press. Orr is a Cambridge associate professor. On 3 September he was shown on camera arranging for a US company to pay for Reform UK's polling, which electoral law forbids. He stood down as Reform's head of policy the next morning. Cambridge said it was examining his conduct that afternoon. On 9 September the Metropolitan Police opened a criminal investigation. Two of the secretly funded polls had run on the Telegraph's own front page. What the press did with that week tells you what it is for. It is not for giving you news you care about. It conducts witch-hunts, it spreads hate and racism, and it serves the people who own it. The two papers that wrote most about Jason Arday are not even owned in this country: Axel Springer of Berlin completed its purchase of the Telegraph in June, and The Times belongs to the Murdochs' News Corp in New York. - Jason Arday was a Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism. In the week after he resigned, fifteen national outlets wrote 163 articles about him. - In the week after the Channel 4 film, the same fifteen outlets wrote 14 about Orr. The people who wrote the Arday story call themselves education journalists. Here's how much interest they took in associate professor Orr: - Albert Tait, Education Editor, The Telegraph: 14 articles on Arday, 0 naming Orr. - Eleanor Harding, Education Editor, Daily Mail: 6 on Arday, 0 on Orr. - Richard Adams, Education Editor, The Guardian: 6 on Arday, 0 on Orr. - Nicola Woolcock, Education Editor, The Times: 4 on Arday, 0 on Orr. - Branwen Jeffreys, Education Editor, BBC News: 3 on Arday, 0 on Orr. - Tom Williams, News Editor, Times Higher Education: 6 on Arday, 0 on Orr. Fifteen journalists led the Arday coverage. Between them they wrote 93 articles about a Black Cambridge professor accused of copying other people's work. Not one of them wrote a sentence about a Cambridge academic under police investigation for how a political party was funded. Times Higher Education, the trade paper of the sector, ran twelve pieces on Arday and none on Orr. Every outlet followed the same pattern: - The Times: 30 on Arday in a week, 4 on Orr. - The Mail: 28 against 1. - The Telegraph, whose front page carried the polls and which says it was misled: 26 against 1. - The Guardian: 11 against 2. - The BBC: 7 against 1. Andrew Gilligan is the clearest case. Since 11 August he has published nine pieces in The Spectator, eight of them about Cambridge: - Farah Ahmed and her work on Islamic education, twice - an Islamic-education project the faculty is linked to, twice - the education faculty's leadership; Lord Woolley, the first Black man to head an Oxbridge college, whom he calls unfit for the job, twice - Cambridge's inquiry into Arday, which he calls a whitewash. Every Cambridge person he has gone after is Black or works on Islamic education. Two of those pieces came after Orr stood down. Neither mentions him. A Cambridge academic on the education beat, under examination by the university Gilligan writes about weekly, facing a police investigation, and the man who says a Black college head is unfit for his job has not found him worth a line. This is not journalism. A journalist covers stories that are of public interest. Orr is undeniably of utmost public interest. These journalists chose their subject by who he was, and when the next Cambridge scandal arrived with a police investigation attached, they looked away. The hounding of Arday was a witch-hunt, and the silence on Orr is its proof. These outlets are not delivering the news to their readers. They are delivering an agenda. Every article is listed and linked at newscord.org/editorials/orr-….