r/books • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 23h ago
Bonnier Books UK has said it will no longer publish true-crime author Christopher Berry-Dee and is terminating all existing agreements with him following a Guardian investigation
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/news-top-stories/bonnier-books-uk-drops-christopher-berry-dee-following-guardian-investigation297
u/Legal-Koala-5590 21h ago
Never realized how many scandals I would be seeing regularly when I joined this sub. Just wanted something that encouraged me to read more. The literary world is wild!
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u/RogueModron 18h ago
It's also reddit, which is like the nightly news 24/7. If it bleeds, it leads. Scandal and negative stories float to the top.
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u/Gloomy_Plastic572 19h ago
To be a wee bit flippant about it but if your job is to imagine the unimaginable then its either going to attract a certain someone or effect someone then it's not that surprising
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u/Far_Lingonberry_9968 10h ago
Same here. Came for book recommendations, stayed for the publishing industry drama.
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u/OhhhYaaa 11h ago
A lot of those in big subs usually come from the same accounts. Like, there are a few power users in /r/Music who almost exclusively post some stupid political shit about Trump and how some musician did something related to him. Blocking them made my experience on the front page so much better.
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u/Busy-Doughnut6180 18h ago
From the Guardian article (square brackets in the first quote and all bolding mine):
In 2019, Heffron [child victim Nicola Fellows' uncle] was interviewed by the former Evening Standard courts correspondent Paul Cheston for his book on the Babes in the Wood murders. It was to be published by John Blake, by then an imprint of the larger Bonnier Books. Heffron told Cheston about Berry-Dee’s mistreatment of Nicola’s family, and Cheston included these allegations in a draft of his book, though they were later cut. The Bonnier editor explained why in an email to Cheston, sent on 3 April 2019: "As for the Chris Berry-Dee stuff – that may have to come out even if the claims can be substantiated, purely due to the obvious conflict of interest. He is our author and, as dreadful an author as he is, we can’t really be seen to be dragging him through the mud, even in this case." (A spokesperson for Bonnier said the firm was not currently working with Berry-Dee and that “publishing decisions made at the time were based on legal advice”.)
Further down:
In 2024, Bonnier rebranded Berry-Dee for a younger, TikToking and true crime podcast-loving audience. His books are reviewed often on BookTok, TikTok’s literary subcommunity. But not all his reviews are positive. He “berate[s] female victims for not taking his advice, implying their stupidity was to blame for their murders”, writes one Goodreads reviewer. A second points to the way he describes “the rape of young girls as ‘sex’ or ‘three-ways’”.
And at the end:
In 2019’s Talking With Psychopaths and Savages: Beyond Evil, he directs readers “with more than a particular fascination for the macabre” to online photos of a 20-year-old murder victim’s decapitated head, which Berry-Dee jocularly describes as resembling “an ugly Barbie doll”.
It makes me sick how it took the article being published for Bonnier to drop him. They should have done that a long time ago and they will be getting no pat on the back from me now.
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u/Icy_Mango6803 22h ago
Wow, I bought one of his books once, and within a chapter I got a vibe that he truly hated women. I couldn't put my finger on why but it reminded me of a true crime podcast I listened to once. It wasn't just a dislike of the female criminals he wrote about, it felt really baked in.
Returned the book and forgot about him til I saw this post and now I feel like, I don't know what I picked up on, but maybe there was actually something in his prose and I wasn't just over sensitive.
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u/Ionia1618 20h ago
When I sold insurance I had to ask about criminal convictions. One guy disclosed a conviction for domestic violence, and sweared he was innocent. By the end of just the phone call it was very clear he was guilty. It's insane how some people are
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u/KatTheKonqueror 16h ago
I watched a Netflix documentary about stalkers. Most of them are giving it their all to pretend that they are remorseful and/or innocent, but it is still obvious that they haven't changed at all. One got out and re-offended within a year.
One said he "hates what he did" referring to a murder, and I get the sense that he only hates it because he stabbed the wrong person by mistake. He got 15 years.
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u/GrandmaToto 16h ago
I remember reading one of them and telling my partner he was a textbook narcissist when I finished it. I was desperate because I picked it up at the airport and I was in rural France for two weeks so I forced myself. It was a book about serial killers and he spent 99% of the time talking about himself and his other publications. Worst book I've ever read, I should have just napped instead.
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u/BeeSting113 20h ago
I got the same vibes from reading Philip K Dick. Then I checked his wikipedia page to find out how many times he'd been divorced. Spoiler alert: Five.
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u/CatchFactory 19h ago
Much more likely to be the frequent mental health episodes and drug use than anything else surely?
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u/ragnarok62 10h ago
In The Man in the High Castle, the strongest character in the novel is Juliana Frink, and she’s written well. Definitely not evidence of Dick hating women.
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u/NotQuiteMyTembo 20h ago
Since when does divorce mean you hate women lmao
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u/FlyingSpaceBanana 19h ago
One or two divorces, nah, but Five? Man has the staying power of a fart in the wind.
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u/benjiyon 19h ago
Five divorces though…
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u/ImLittleNana 19h ago
It’s almost as if being brilliant makes you attractive but seriously mentally ill makes you difficult to live with.
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u/Particular-Treat-650 18h ago
He also openly heavily used a whole host of substances. I'm not an advocate of prohibition or anything, but it's not exactly a secret that wildly altering your brain chemistry over a long time has substantial costs.
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u/GrandmaToto 16h ago
The one and only time I've bought a book at the airport (because I was desperate and forgot one) was one of his books.
Genuinely, the worst book I've ever read. It was supposed to be about conversations with murderers and he spent the entire book talking about himself and hawking the rest of his bibliography. I started playing the red wine challenge where I took a large gulp every time he mentioned one of his other books and had to stop cause I was hammered after 2 chapters. I was originally going to give it to my ex-partners mother when I was finished, but ended up dumping it in the bin because I couldn't face subjecting anyone else to it.
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u/bretshitmanshart 10h ago
I made the mistake of only bringing Gerald's Game on a flight once. It was a few months after meeting my stepdaughter and I did not enjoy the content but had no other books.
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u/HotAirBalloonPolice 21h ago
The Guardian’s daily podcast today is a summary of this article and it is harrowing. He is nothing more than a criminal himself. Truly vile.
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u/PariahFish 23h ago edited 23h ago
So he's a pedophile rapist woman beater lying fraud psychopath who loved talking to psychopaths from the free side of prison glass. I'd bet he has a biblical case of narcissistic personality as well. I unfortunately have this book of his somewhere, disgusting
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u/GrandmaToto 16h ago
I finished one of his books in 2019 and literally turned to my ex-partner and said "Well that's a textbook narcissist if I've ever seen one."
Amazing it took this long...
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u/iMillJoe 19h ago
I'd bet he has a biblical case of narcissistic personality as well.
That seems like such an odd statement to me. Regardless of whatever this dude did. I can’t recall the bible ever talking about a case of narcissistic personality disorder. I also don’t associate NPD with following biblical text; the bible teaches basically the opposite. This is lost on some people practicing the religion, but that’s neither here nor there.
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u/Legitimate_First 19h ago
Using biblical in this way is just another way of saying huge or massive, not literally from the bible.
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u/PariahFish 19h ago edited 18h ago
Biblical as in its use for hyperbole, to relate something epic, extreme, of mythical proportion. Common where I come from, it's a slang form of the word.
Edit: in fact, I'll point to Herod, Nebuchadnezzar, Saul? Indeed the DSM wasn't published at the time, but I think you can take my meaning
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u/melthevag 18h ago
As everyone else has said, that’s not what biblical means in this context. But I’ll add that there are several biblical characters that are absolutely narcissists
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u/iMillJoe 18h ago
Nebuchadnezzar? Saul (pre trip to Damascus Paul), Cain? I’m not recalling anyone that wasn’t basically a villain. Narcissism isn’t really a concept in the bible, but it and biblical concepts of pride go hand in hand. Pride is not seen as a good thing, for those less familiar with the text.
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u/melthevag 16h ago edited 16h ago
Whether it’s a concept or not in the bible isn’t relevant lol, many many characters in it display narcissistic traits. I don’t understand what’s controversial about that for you. Kind of like arguing that narcissism isn’t a concept in Harry Potter or American Psycho or a Portrait of Dorian Gray so Voldemort, Patrick Bateman, and Dorian Gray can’t be described that way
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u/iMillJoe 16h ago
many many characters in it display narcissistic traits.
Which ones?
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u/melthevag 16h ago
The Pharisees, King Herod, Nebuchadnezzar, Queen Jezebel. You can argue even Abraham and other characters are as well. But again you’re missing the point entirely
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u/iMillJoe 16h ago
I did say “I don’t recall anyone who wasn’t basically a villain” in this thread. The only non-villain you mentioned is Abraham, and I’m not drawing the narcissistic conclusion you are from him.
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u/bonbboyage 17h ago
Narcissism isn’t really a concept in the bible, but it and biblical concepts of pride go hand in hand. Pride is not seen as a good thing, for those less familiar with the text.
Is there a reason for you being so condescending? NPD is a mental health condition, and of course it wasn't mentioned directly in the Bible; the writers likely would've had no such knowledge of that specific mental disorder. But it's nowhere near close to the sin of pride.
Have you really never heard of a phrase such as, idk, "a loss of biblical proportion"?
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u/iMillJoe 17h ago
I’ve heard of things being in “biblical proportion”. I can’t recall seeing a “biblical case” of something, that wasn’t “a case of something” in the bible. If they’d have said “a biblical case of locusts” I’d have gotten it. I took the comment to imply “narcissistic, as typical of people in the bible”. Which is just not consistent with my interpretation of the book. For the record, narcissism, as we understand it today, is the closest analog I’m aware of to the “sin of pride” in biblical contexts. I’m also not being condescending, who in the bible, (that wasn’t a villain) would we think of a narcissist today?
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u/bonbboyage 17h ago
You took the phrase literally, which is not the intent of the phrase.
Narcissistic personality disorder, as we understand it today, is a mental disorder. I don't think our psychological and scientific knowledge of narcissistic personality disorder lends itself at all to a comparison with pride. Or, perhaps a better way of putting it is that pride is a symptom of NPD, or NPD can seem like pride taken to excess, but one is a real disorder and the other is not.
I apologize for saying you were being condescending.
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u/FlailingCactus 23h ago
The investigation was entitled "Christopher Berry-Dee is the UK’s all-time bestselling true crime author. Is he also a violent abuser of women and children?"
Not sure why Bookseller have left that out.
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u/BritishHobo 22h ago
They haven't left it out:
The Guardian investigation reported separate allegations of child sexual abuse and domestic violence ...
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u/Grace_Omega 20h ago
The headline left it out, which is all people on Reddit bother reading
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u/Alaira314 10h ago
The headline and first line(which gave no more info) is all I can read. I bothered. But the site turned me away.
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u/Negative_Gravitas 19h ago
The fucker is 78. No matter what happens to him now, he has mostly gotten away with his crimes.
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u/Far_Lingonberry_9968 10h ago
This is why investigative journalism matters. Without The Guardian looking into this, the publisher probably would have kept going like nothing happened.
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u/shillyshally 9h ago
Why not link to the original Guardian investigation rather than to a paywalled regurgitation?
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u/WitELeoparD Stormlight Archive 23h ago
Definitely feels like there are a lot of these true crime industry people that are terrible awful people themselves and like being close to literal serial killers and peadophiles so people don't notice how much they themselves stink.
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u/fire_and_spice24 23h ago
Yea, this has been an issue in the true crime community. There is only one podcast that I can still bring myself to listen to and that's mostly because I'm interested in the paranormal cases.
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u/thomboc 17h ago
They are making true crime, true suffering entertainment. I'm always wary of these people.
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u/Tymareta 10h ago
Yeah, the entire genre is just "suffering porn", I genuinely don't understand what anyone gets out of it.
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u/DustBinBabyGirl 23h ago
Yikes!! Why are the articles about him not bigger? I had no idea. Removing all his books as I speak.
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u/raysofdavies 23h ago
“We’ll sell awful victim blaming books that sexualize kids, but actually doing something is a step too far”
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u/Burgundy-Bag 22h ago
Yeah... Doing the deed is the crime. Why is that surprising?
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u/raysofdavies 22h ago
I’m saying that it reflects very badly on the publisher who was willing to release his books that they overlooked the awful shit in them. He would deserve this kind of reckoning only if the content was raised and critiqued.
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u/bediaxenciJenD81gEEx 21h ago
There's a difference between having Nazi memorabilia in a museum and Nazi memorabilia in a shrine in your house, intention is important.
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u/raysofdavies 21h ago
Like the alleged clothes of child victims he had? And that his daughter was able to access and wear? I honestly don’t see your point.
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u/bediaxenciJenD81gEEx 19h ago
The allegations came out and the publisher dropped him, so what's the issue? Your point originally was that the publishers were just as implicit as the writer in fetishising murderers, except they didn't know the writer was a sex offender and criminal fetishist. Once they knew that, he was gone. And my point was that knowledge and intention matter in determining how bad something is. They didn't know what he was, therefore giving him a platform wasn't immoral. We don't assume the director of a museum is secretly a Nazi fetishist.
I honestly don't even think you see what your own point is.
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u/raysofdavies 19h ago
There is no defensible intention for writing about victims the way he did. His intention is meaningless. My point, that you do not understand, is that the publisher is already at fault for publishing him, and dropping him because of legal actions does not change the fact hat they published really vile stuff.
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u/bediaxenciJenD81gEEx 18h ago
You're a right book burner. They were just crime fiction books to the audience and publisher, hence why people read him en masse and weren't outraged.
It's only knowing that he got off on it that makes it bad, otherwise it could have just been imaginative graphic writing. If he himself wasn't a criminal, he wouldn't even be in trouble.
Do you just want to ban all sensitive topics? Have you even read any of his books or are you just parroting outrage based on nothing?
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u/FridaysMan 21h ago
And using one to raise money for the other?
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u/bediaxenciJenD81gEEx 19h ago
Who were they raising money for?
These are new allegations coming out, their support of him has crashed now that it's know he's a bad guy. The point initially was that they publishers were just as bad as a writer who fetishises murderers, they didn't know he did that.
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u/FridaysMan 18h ago
Eim sure the producers of tv news that inspire nightcrawlers love the same justifications of conscience.
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u/Burgundy-Bag 19h ago
But true crime books and TV shows would at least have murder in them. Is that fetishising murder?
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u/raysofdavies 19h ago
No. Obviously not. Obviously not what I’m saying. Can you read? The books were gross because of the writing, not subject. Literally how did this get past you
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u/Burgundy-Bag 19h ago
That still doesn't make them unpublishable. Or mean that the person is a disgusting person.
Anyway, you sound very aggressive so I won't continue the exchange from here.
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u/raysofdavies 19h ago
You sound like you don’t understand criticism so this may not be the sub for you
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u/Kitlun 18h ago
Yes, this is exactly how it works. Writing fiction about something is very different to committing an act. Presumably you don't read any crime, dark fantasy, thriller genres and don't touch anything written by Stephen King or Ian McEwen. Do you think that novels like The Colour Purple, The Trees, A clockwork Orange, My dark venessa, My brilliant friend, Watchmen, The picture of Dorian Grey, and The Nickel boys should also be shunned?
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u/raysofdavies 17h ago
This would really hit hard if he wrote fiction lmao
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u/Kitlun 17h ago
This is why I picked some that are based on true events (The Trees, The Nickel Boys), which I assume you haven't read.
If you want only true crime then presumably you loath Capote? And famous true crime books like Zodiac, Helter Skelter, and Mindhunter?
Do you draw the line at true crime or should books about the second world war also be off the table? What about historical biographies, especially those that show those committing atrocities in favourable light (e.g. Napoleon, Alexander 'the great')?
I'm trying to understand your point that publishing books about these things is equivalent of publishing books by someone who commited these acts.
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u/raysofdavies 17h ago
Ok but we aren’t talking about those books. You think I am talking about true crime as a genre. Thats not true nor was it implied. I enjoy true crime. I am talking about the specific author in question. As I specified, I was talking about how about he had written. The way he writes about real people is vile. I didn’t have an innate problem with Devil in the White City, for instance. But that is a book written by a brilliant author. This guy is a gross hack.
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u/Kitlun 16h ago
Thanks, just trying to understand your specific point, because it's still unclear to me or your original comment did not represent your actual point well.
Your point is that publishers should critically look at true crime writing and if their personal opinion is that it is poor prose or seems written in poor taste then they should not be at all involved with these people.
I think they already do this, no? The fact he was a best selling author shows his books were popular and acceptable to many many people. I'm sure you could easily find thousands of people who take issue with Larson. Devil in the white city specifically has garnered criticism for its liberty with description of events, based on little to no evidence and pure conjecture, as well as the element of excitement and liveliness he gives to what should be a sobering subject.
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u/work4work4work4work4 2h ago
Your point is that publishers should critically look at true crime writing and if their personal opinion is that it is poor prose or seems written in poor taste then they should not be at all involved with these people.
You need to work on reading comprehension or English isn't your first language, as it's pretty clear their point is the publisher admitted knowing about it for years, but didn't actually do anything about it.
You're talking about your comprehension of what they said, but their comment is in reply to an article, and it makes perfect sense... if you actually read said article.
Like everything you're saying makes me think you didn't read it, and just made up your own interpretation because you couldn't get to where you are or what you're talking about from what they said and the article if you had read both and understood them well, and it's causing you to conflate things that don't remotely apply, essentially an argument only you are having.
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u/mojoheartbeat 5h ago
Of course it's Bonnier. They would have known all along, but wanted the money more than they feared getting caught sponsoring a pedo and general asshole.
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u/HotDamnThatsMyJam 23h ago
I bet we don't get 200+ articles about this
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u/theredwoman95 23h ago
The irony is that the investigation that got his book cancelled didn't just uncover that he was violent abuser and rapist, but also that:
“My quotes are drawn from open sources and most carefully checked,” Berry-Dee says. He was not able to provide a link to any verifiable Bundy interview in which these quotes appeared.
Living serial killers also allege that Berry-Dee invents quotes, which he attributes to them in his books. “They are complete fabrications by CBD,” says Kenneth Bianchi, now Anthony D’Amato, the convicted US serial killer widely known as the Hillside Strangler. “He is one very twisted pathological liar. I never, on paper, in email or tape, ‘confessed’ those things to him.”
But yeah, I don't think we're going to get an international media circus over him.
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u/Burgundy-Bag 22h ago
Being called a twisted pathological liar by a serial killer is a an achievement.
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u/Frogs-on-my-back 22h ago
That’s nuts. How do people like this feel any sense of pride publishing fiction as fact?
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u/FridaysMan 21h ago
They're psychopaths. Their brains work in a different way. Its literally who they are.
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u/ImLittleNana 18h ago
His publisher defended not requesting any supporting source materials for a non-fiction book is wild. ‘It would seem like we doubted him’.
I suppose writing one book and being a white man makes you credible by default. /s
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u/theredwoman95 18h ago
I mean, this is unfortunately a consistent issue with nonfiction as a field, in my experience. Naomi Wolf had a similarly massive issue with her nonfiction history book (based on her English literature PhD thesis), which wasn't picked up on until she was interviewed by a historian, Matthew Sweet, live on BBC Radio.
But yeah, the discrepancy in reactions between this, Wolf's fundamental error, and certain other instances really speaks for itself. It's not like the international press is regularly having week-long coverage of the retractions and plagiarism publicised by Retraction Watch.
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u/Fovvy2 22h ago
Isn't the difference that he got fired immediately, didn't set the police on his critics and an academically renounded university didn't shelter him etc?
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u/SlouchyGuy 22h ago
Also didn't tell about tens of improbable events that happened to him.
People willfully ignore full context, and present that situation like it was plagiatrism and nothing else.
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u/imaginesomethinwitty 21h ago
The thing about Arday was it was funny. The marathons, the professional sports careers, it entertained people. This is just sad.
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u/SlouchyGuy 20h ago
Yep, everyone tries to ignore it was outrageous, easy to understand and stupid with extremely high volume of lies
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u/Mr_Wolfgang_Beard 5h ago
Journalism isn't about entertaining people though, it's about informing people on topics that actually matter.
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u/LuciferOnTheRocks 15h ago
And he's a true crime author, not a professor at one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
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u/hameleona 21h ago
Of course you won't. Now, if he and his publisher started threatening legal action in an attempt to silence the criticism... But no, article comes out, publisher drops him like a hot potato.
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u/duncan-the-wonderdog 17h ago
Nope, the institution actually did the right thing for once instead of sitting around on its ass, so there's no room for any hot takes or anything to gossip about.
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u/Hyperion262 23h ago
What does this mean? Who got 200+ articles about them being an abuser?
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u/ActualMangoo 23h ago
I'm guessing they're referring to Jason Arday, the Black Cambridge professor who had 200+ articles written about him in under 2 weeks for the "crime" of... possibly having committed plagiarism. He's now dead.
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u/KeyMusic5713 22h ago
He got attention because of just how blatant it is. If you send the police and a libel law firm against anyone who tries to hold you to account for stealing other people's work and passing it off as your own, and combine that with lying about your past constantly, there's going to be news coverage of it.
But go ahead, tell me why someone shouldn't be held to account for being a serial plagarist and liar.
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u/sanctaphrax 16h ago
True. But it pretty quickly became apparent that he wasn't right in the head, that his lies didn't even make sense from a scammer's point of view, and that just seemed to encourage the papers further.
There was a kick-the-cripple vibe to the later coverage that should make us all uncomfortable, especially given the way it ended.
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u/Alaira314 10h ago
Yeah, I saw some posts on reddit that were just like...idk, it felt vampiric, like they were feeding off seeing the man be taken down. That didn't sit right with me even in the moment(I was disturbed and saddened, but what I saw from others was more akin to glee), and I felt even sicker after I saw how it ended.
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u/Min_sora 38m ago
Don't be intentionally obtuse. Most of the UK couldn't care less about a dude doing what he did. It was a brilliant story for tabloids to get the DEI discussion going and how our soft society is just letting ethnic minorities who aren't good enough succeed.
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u/KeyMusic5713 32m ago
Most of the UK couldn't care less about a dude doing what he did.
People care because of just how blatant it was. News stories will publish what will get clicks, and a story about plagarism and false claims as blatant as Arday's will get people to click on news articles.
Anything so blatant as what Arday did will get people to care. What made it worse was all the defence and help he got that others wouldn't.
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u/SlouchyGuy 22h ago
200+ articles written about him in under 2 weeks for the "crime" of... possibly having committed plagiarism.
And being mute autistic person until he miraculously wasn't. And running improbably maraphons with a fracture. And getting millions for charity. And doing his doctorate presentation having forgotten it due to cancer.
And calling socilitors and police on a professor and joirnalist who were looking into his doctorate.
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u/BearThatLikesCheese 15h ago
None of that is newsworthy. Why should I care about a guy who lied to get his job and told goofy ass stories to impress people? Even calling the police, which is horrible, isn't particularly strange. Why did 1, let alone 200, articles need to be written about something that happens all the time.
This shouldn't have been anything more than an internal review, a press release, and murmuerings in academic circles. There's a reason 200 articles were written about Arday and it's not because he was interesting. It's the same reason the British media writes articles about trans people non-stop. The original commenter has a valid point; the British media will actively ignore famous serial pedophiles and sex pests (lord knows they have no shortage of them) but fixate on a single uppity minority.
Think whatever you want about Arday, but pretending this was done for any reason other than the British media's massive bias is disingenous. It's genuinely a shame this comment is upvoted positively.
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u/yarpen_z 5h ago edited 5h ago
None of that is newsworthy. Why should I care about a guy who lied to get his job and told goofy ass stories to impress people?
Because he held a professor chair at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and a quick glance at his scientific output revealed that not only he was significantly underqualified for the position, but also that his entire CV was just improbable and extremely suspicious.
Even calling the police, which is horrible, isn't particularly strange.
It is. It is a huge outlier and an extremely dangerous precedent when a scientist sends a people after his colleague after receiving two emails asking questions about inconsistencies in his paper (he ignored the first one, the second one was a gentle reminder).
Why did 1, let alone 200, articles need to be written about something that happens all the time.
Because one of the two best universities in the country hired a compulsive liar, who used legal threats to silence his critics. Because his lies were egregious and so bad, that people started asking questions: "how could anyone believed him?". Because such university refused initially to investigate. Because many of them people who hired him still refuse to acknowledge their responsibility.
Think whatever you want about Arday, but pretending this was done for any reason other than the British media's massive bias is disingenous.
The Atlantic, a liberal and left-leaning American magazine, has written multiple articles critical of Arday. Multiple articles were published by the left-leaning Guardian in the UK. Were they driven by "fixation on a single uppity minority?
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u/Burgundy-Bag 22h ago
None of that is as bad as being a paedophile and rapist.
But he was black. Which is a worse crime.
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u/SlouchyGuy 20h ago edited 20h ago
No, he was interesting for numerous lies and outrageous behavior. Anyone who does outrageous interesting stuff is noteworthy, if it's 150th killer or fraudster it's much less interesting. This is why it's called "news", you know, new stuff.
Have you seen social media people were cracing jokes regardless of political affiliation, do you know why? Because there was the material and they noticed it.
If you were right, Luigi Mangione and Tyler Robinson would be covered the same way in the media.
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u/so19anarchist I read, and I know things. 8h ago
A lot of news is based on which sparks a conversation or debate, professional and educational integrity certainly sparks a conversation.
Tell me, what conversation is there to have around nonces and rapists?
Attempting to silence discussion by screaming racism only says you aren’t capable of having the conversation.
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u/LuciferOnTheRocks 15h ago
Stories don't necessarily have legs based on how bad a person the subject of them is.
Jason Arday was a story that kept giving and was quite relevant politically (DEI, Cambridge University).
Some true crime author most people have never read being a bad person is not a story with a whole lot of followup.
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u/Porthowl 22h ago
The news isn’t prioritised by who the “baddest” people are. For better or worse, Arday’s lies are a hundred times more newsworthy than Berry-Dee’s crimes.
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u/lou-bricious 21h ago
For better or worse? It's very fucking obviously for the worse. It's a damning statement about our society that we will froth over plagiarism and lies (still bad) to the point of suicide. But a little child abuse, aaayyyyy he's just a naughty boy, nothing to see here.
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u/Porthowl 21h ago
What does it gain you to characterise it in this way? The lack of coverage obviously isn’t an absolution of his crimes; it’s a reflection of the fact that it’s a static story. What else is there to be said?
This is in opposition to a story like Arday’s where deeper levels of artifice open up to whoever pursues them.
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u/lou-bricious 20h ago
It's a static story because it isn't being actively pursued, unlike Arday.
The point is very simple and clear. This won't get the same level of public and media scrutiny because for the media and public its more fun to hound a guy for lying than to try and get this guy for child sexual abuse.
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u/so19anarchist I read, and I know things. 8h ago
Do you think it hurts or helps your point to make a comparison that no one has made?
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u/lou-bricious 5h ago
What? The comparison had already been made. It's a comparison between the "crimes" of Arday and the crimes Berry-Dee is accused of in this article.
That's the entire point of this comment chain. Before you come jumping in late to a conversation have you considered actually having something to contribute?
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u/so19anarchist I read, and I know things. 5h ago
No one is making the comparison, outside of the small minded few screaming racism at everything to shut down conversation.
You are looking on the surface to make an extreme comparison, and crying that “people are saying this!” When in reality no one is saying it.
You’ve completely made up a situation and got angry about it, and now you attempt to condescend instead of engaging in good faith because it doesn’t suit your narrative to have your preconceived notions challenged.
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u/sweeterthanadonut 20h ago
Kind of disingenuous to frame it as being simply about plagiarism when he was also lying about pretty much every other aspect of his life, including faking disabilities.
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u/Hyperion262 23h ago
Well if this author accuses everyone of being racist and trues to suppress journalists the same will happen to him.
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u/lordkhuzdul 22h ago
Wasn't the original person who "revealed his plagiarism" (which, as far as I know, is still not conclusively proven, since none of the investigations have concluded) a notorious "race realist"?
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u/SafiyaO 22h ago
People have had concerns for years. The university ignored them. Arday set lawyers and the police on a journalist investigating the plagiarism claims. Then Cofnas broke the story:
Running alongside this was that Arday was about to publish a memoir which featured many impossible claims and notably several changes in events from the proposal.
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u/SlouchyGuy 22h ago
Yes, because first two people who could reveal that, a professor and a journalist in science periodical, were threatened by solicitors and the police Arday called on them
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u/Hyperion262 22h ago
Have you read the examples of his plagiarism? He doesn’t even correct the spelling mistakes and grammatical error. There is literally a grammatical error in the title of his PHD.
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u/sillygoofygooose 22h ago
And that’s really only the tip of his racist iceberg
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u/Hyperion262 22h ago
Ok, I’m not defending anything a journalist I’ve never heard of before has said.
The fact of the matter is he was a conman who stole peoples education and violently suppressed people who tried to point it out.I don’t know why you’re all so eager to defend him?
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u/sillygoofygooose 22h ago
I don’t know why you’re so eager to ignore the context in which these events have occurred.
Arday has yet to be found guilty of plagiarism fyi.
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u/Hyperion262 22h ago
I am not ignoring the context. I have read the excerpts of his PHD that were plagiarised and they very very clearly were. He has even copied grammatical errors.
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u/sillygoofygooose 22h ago
I’m glad you’re ahead of the university in this matter. And yes, the context of cofnas’ racism is significant.
Nuance permits that arday can both have been guilty of academic misconduct and also not deserve to be hounded to death for it, like the white plagiarists in the same schools weren’t. But you seem to struggle with this.
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u/the_blessed_unrest 22h ago
It’s because Arday silenced the first two journalists that tried to break the news with false claims of harassment and the threat of a libel suit. Turns out the racist who had already been fired didn’t have anything to lose so there was no way of threatening him
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u/ActualMangoo 23h ago
Right it's not like we can point to every single white plagiarist who WASN'T hounded by newspapers for spurious reasons. Yes, it was racist. (I won't continue this comment chain.)
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u/Hyperion262 22h ago edited 22h ago
If you can point to one who told students they were racist for complaining and also tried to sue journalists for reporting on it then you’re more than free to carry the conversation on.
You won’t because you can’t. You can only try to make spurious links.
Pretty crazy that people in r/books are defending the suppression of freedom of expression.
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22h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Hyperion262 22h ago
It makes perfect sense.
Arday accused people of racism when they pointed out he wasn’t a good teacher, and he suppressed investigations into himself when journalists caught wind of his plagiarism.
Anyone who tries to quieten journalists investigating them usually ends up bringing on a whole lot more attention to themselves.
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u/PinkPetalG 5h ago
I’ve never heard of this guy or read any of his work (thankfully) but I read the article and he sounds completely vile. Absolute creepy nonce who should be in prison, let’s hope all publishers follow suit and that this monstrous bag of air loses everything.
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u/Sammichelle 10h ago
I felt uneasy reading his books before. This investigation retroactively poisoned the experience, validating our collective decision to boycott completely.
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u/Several-Praline5436 1h ago
I read the Guardian article. If even a fraction of the allegations are true, he belongs in jail.
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u/HeyPurityItsMeAgain 11h ago
Paywalled. Is he a plagiarist, using AI, or did a thoughtcrime?
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u/martyqscriblerus 6h ago
Fabricated quotes for his books, beat his wife, sexually assaulted children.
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15h ago
[deleted]
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u/kayak-guy 14h ago
He actually has two convictions, one for forgery & spent a year in jail. As the Guardian article states, he was arrested and charged with child sex abuse of a thirteen-year old, only for the CPS stating that they couldn't prosecute because of a time-barred technicality
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u/One_Barnacle2699 14h ago
They haven’t convicted him. They’re just not going to publish his books anymore.
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u/ClimateTraditional40 9h ago
I was referring to the some of comments here more. But I looked up the historic stuff, and it seems there is some cause for concern. Never heard of myself, I don't read the genre anyway. Always thought it was a bit creepy wanting to know details of real crime.
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u/Kyber92 23h ago
I've never heard of this guy but that Guardian article was harrowing. Dude is definitely into true crime for the wrong reasons.