The columnist is Dr Lola Salem, an Oxford music lecturer. She is to stand trial on charges of possessing indecent images of children, which she denies.
Notice the different standards. Jason Arday was charged with nothing, and the papers kept every word they wrote about him. A Telegraph columnist is facing a criminal trial, and the papers deleted their reports within two days.
She has pleaded not guilty, and she is entitled to a fair trial. We are not asking anyone to do to her what the papers did to him. Jason Arday was entitled to the same fairness.
What the papers did to Jason Arday
Jason Arday was the youngest Black professor in Cambridge’s history. In July he was accused of plagiarism and of making up parts of his life story. From 24 July until the afternoon of 14 August, the Telegraph, the Mail and the Spectator wrote about him almost every day.
What the figures show:
- The Telegraph ran 42 pieces. Six headlines called him Cambridge’s “diversity poster boy”, five of them on stories by Gordon Rayner. An opinion piece called him “the Cambridge fantasist”.
- The Mail ran 37. Fifteen headlines called him the “plagiarism professor” or “Professor Plagiarism”. On 6 August it asked its readers in a poll whether criticism of him had been “racially motivated”.
- The Spectator ran 21, and put him on its cover under “The fantastical truth about Jason Arday”. Its editor is Michael Gove.
- He resigned from Cambridge on 5 August, saying he had reached “the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure”. In the nine days after that, the three papers ran 67 more pieces about him.
- He was found dead on 14 August.
Nobody had charged him with anything, so the law that protects people facing trial did not protect him. On 11 October we checked all 100 pieces. Every one of them is still online. Read the full census.
Their Arday pieces, still online
What they did when a Telegraph columnist was charged
Dr Salem is 33 and lectures in music at Oriel College. Her six Telegraph columns, written since July 2024 on schools, Latin, culture and France, are all still on its website.
Oriel College suspended her in June, when it learned of the charges. Her case was listed in open court at Oxford Combined Court Centre on 22 and 23 July, and again on 29 and 30 September.
At 7am on 10 October, eleven weeks after the first listing, the Telegraph published Gordon Rayner’s report that she is to stand trial for possessing indecent images of children between May 2021 and February 2023. She has pleaded not guilty and is on bail. At 5.20pm the same day, the Mail published its own report, by Elizabeth Ivens.
Neither report is still up. By the evening of 11 October:
- the Telegraph’s address sent readers to its homepage
- the Mail’s answered “410 Gone”, the code a website gives for a page it has taken down on purpose
- Yahoo had taken down its copy of the Telegraph report
Neither paper has said why. Their Arday pieces load as normal.
The Telegraph, then and now
The Daily Mail, then and now
Gordon Rayner wrote the Telegraph’s first story about Jason Arday. It ran under the headline “Cambridge’s diversity poster boy in plagiarism row”. His story about a Telegraph columnist facing trial ran under “Oxford University professor charged with possessing indecent images of children”. Then the Telegraph deleted it.
What the Spectator did
Michael Gove has edited the Spectator since October 2024, and sits in the House of Lords. He and Dr Salem were together for two years, and arrived together at the Spectator’s summer party in 2024. On 2 October the Mail’s diary editor, Richard Eden, reported that they had split “some time ago”.
On 9 October the Spectator published a column by Dr Salem, “You cannot devolve a culture that you cannot define”. It was the only article on her Spectator writer page. It carried no note telling readers that the writer had been the editor’s partner.
By 11 October the Spectator had deleted the column and her writer page. Spectator Life pieces by other writers from the same days are still up. The Spectator has published nothing about the charge, and all 21 of its pieces on Jason Arday are still online, cover included.
Her Spectator column, then and now
Her Spectator writer page, then and now
The Spectator spent two weeks telling its readers “the fantastical truth about Jason Arday”. When the charge against a writer it had published the day before was reported, it deleted her column and said nothing.
The Catholic Herald has also taken down all six of the columns she wrote for it.
What Michael Gove did to Muslim schools and groups
The man who edits the magazine that put Jason Arday on its cover has a record of branding Muslim schools and Muslim groups in public.
In 2014, as Education Secretary, he appointed Peter Clarke, the Met’s former head of counter-terrorism, to investigate Birmingham schools over an anonymous letter. A Birmingham City Council official’s notes of a meeting at his department that February record: “The police recommendation including the counterterrorism unit is that the letter was bogus”.
Whilst Clarke reported an “intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos” in a few schools, he wrote: “I neither specifically looked for, nor found, evidence of terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism in the schools of concern in Birmingham.” In 2017 the misconduct case against five of the teachers collapsed, because the regulator had held back evidence, which the panel called “an extraordinarily serious error of judgment”.
In March 2024, in the Commons, where MPs cannot be sued for what they say, he named the Muslim Association of Britain, CAGE and MEND as groups that “give rise to concern because of their Islamist orientation and views”. MEND’s chief executive dared him to say it outside Parliament.
In March 2026 the Centre for Media Monitoring found that 26 per cent of the Spectator’s articles about Muslims were “very biased”, the highest of any outlet it studied. Gove answered: “It is a front organisation for the Muslim Council of Britain”.
Gove did not wait for any process before he named three Muslim groups in Parliament. His magazine did not wait for any process before it put Jason Arday on its cover.
What the law says
For Dr Salem. She has been charged and has pleaded not guilty, so her case is active. Under the Contempt of Court Act 1981, anything that creates “a substantial risk that the course of justice in the proceedings in question will be seriously impeded or prejudiced” is a contempt of court, whatever the publisher meant by it (section 2(2)). The same Act protects “a fair and accurate report of legal proceedings held in public, published contemporaneously and in good faith” (section 4(1)). The Telegraph’s and the Mail’s reports were that kind of report. Neither paper has said what changed.
For Jason Arday. He was never charged, so the Contempt of Court Act never applied to him. The rules that did apply were in the Editors’ Code: Clause 1 requires accuracy, and Clause 3 forbids harassment. Neither puts any limit on how many times a paper can write about one person.
One standard for Jason Arday, another for their own
A Black academic accused of plagiarism got 100 pieces, a magazine cover and 22 headlines using the papers’ own names for him. None of it has come down. A Telegraph and Spectator writer facing a criminal trial got two news reports with plain headlines, and the papers deleted those. One standard for Jason Arday. Another for their own.
What we are asking for, by 25 October
- The Telegraph and the Daily Mail say publicly why they removed their reports of a case heard in open court. If a court ordered it, they say so. If no court did, they put the reports back.
- The Spectator says why it deleted Dr Salem’s column and her writer page, and tells its readers that the writer had been the editor’s partner.
- All three give the next person they write about, charged or not, the plain headline they gave Dr Salem.
Take action
Complain about what they did to Jason Arday
The complaint to IPSO and the letters to the editors of the Telegraph, the Mail, the Times, the Sun and the Spectator are still open.
Every word they wrote about Jason Arday is still online.
Sources: The Telegraph, 24 July to 14 August 2026 and 10 October 2026 (Wayback Machine, 09:16 UTC); Daily Mail, 24 July to 14 August 2026, 2 October 2026 and 10 October 2026 (Wayback Machine, 16:42 UTC); The Spectator, 30 July to 13 August 2026 and 9 October 2026 (archive.today, 11:54 UTC); NewsCord’s census of the Arday coverage; HMCTS court lists, case 43SP0392424; Press Gazette, 25 September 2024 and 20 March 2026; Hansard, 14 March 2024 and 22 May 2025; Report into allegations concerning Birmingham schools arising from the “Trojan Horse” letter, HC 576, July 2014; Middle East Eye, 3 February 2022 and 14 March 2024; Matrix Chambers, 30 May 2017; Contempt of Court Act 1981, sections 2(2) and 4(1); Editors’ Code, Clauses 1 and 3. Every page was checked on 11 October 2026, between 21:44 and 22:38 UTC.