Met Police chief admits force should NOT have investigated journalist who questioned Cambridge ‘plagiarism’ professor
The Metropolitan Police's Commissioner has acknowledged that the force should not have investigated a journalist who raised questions about a Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism, marking a significant admission over the policing of press scrutiny. The case has drawn attention as an example of concern about police involvement in matters relating to journalistic inquiry and academic misconduct claims, rather than clear criminal wrongdoing.
The controversy centres on a Cambridge academic who was investigated by the university and subsequently resigned after being accused of passing off a Rafael Nadal quote as his own. The journalist involved had been examining these plagiarism claims before becoming the subject of a Met Police probe, which the Commissioner has now conceded was inappropriate.
- Met Police chief admits investigating journalist was wrong.
- Journalist had probed a Cambridge professor's plagiarism claims.
- Professor resigned after university investigation into the allegations.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Press freedom advocates argue that journalists must be free to put direct, sourced questions to academics about serious allegations such as plagiarism without fear of a police report being filed against them. They see the Met's initial willingness to investigate Jack Groves as a troubling example of institutions being used, whether deliberately or not, to deter legitimate scrutiny of powerful figures, and welcome Sir Mark Rowley's admission as a necessary correction that reaffirms journalists' right to ask uncomfortable questions as part of routine, responsible reporting.
The case against
Others argue that the underlying case remains genuinely fraught even if this particular police referral was mishandled, since Professor Arday and his supporters have raised concerns that the sustained media campaign around his PhD amounted to disproportionate, personally intrusive scrutiny of a prominent Black academic. From this perspective, criticising the police's specific error should not be read as settling the separate and legitimate question of whether the conduct and tone of some coverage crossed from fair questioning into harassment, a concern that reporting to any authority, rightly or wrongly, was intended to address.