In defence of Johann Hari
This is a guest post by Stuart Rodger
I first stumbled across Johann Hari’s journalism in 2006, when I was a lonely, frightened gay teenager. Reading through his many articles on gays issues – his obituary of Section 28, his profiles of Peter Tatchell, his condemnations of homophobic bullying, and on and on – helped me immensely, giving me a quiet sense of self-assurance which helped me through my final, frustrated year at school. It is partly because of this glowing kindness, this compassion that positively shines through his work, that I have been shocked at the outpouring of venom against him across the blogosphere. So I would like to take this opportunity to take make the Case for the Defence – in the fairest, most dispassionate way I can.
Fundamentally, it is my contention that the Johann Hari scandal has been incredibly overblown. As far as his interview technique is concerned, I think Naomi Klein put it best when describing it as an ‘attribution problem’. And, given that none of his interviewees has ever complained about being misquoted (even when Johann has been very critical of them), the accusations of fabrication do not carry weight. As it happens, I was with Johann when he was preparing for the interview with Gideon Levy, the interview with whom ignited this scandal, having bumped in to him at Kings Cross Station last summer. Johann was going through what appeared to be around 500 pages of small-print text of his work. His technique involved more effort – not less.
As for wikipedia-sock-puppetry, I agree that it was wrong for Johann to call Christina Odone a homophobe (she is relaxed about gay marriage), and childish of him to continue what appears to have been a very difficult and hostile working relationship at the New Statesman online, years later. But the worst that can be said about the editing of his own profile is that it was narcissistic.
And yes, when you are writing two columns a week over the course of a decade, inevitably some of your facts are wrong. In his article marking the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s creation, for instance – ‘Israel is suppressing a secret it must face’ – he inaccurately quotes pg 23 of Ilan Pappes Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” Only the first part of that David Ben-Gurion quotation is correct (the rest is Pappe’s words). And yes, he made a mistake in saying he was in Iraq for a month, rather than two weeks. The length of time he spent in Iraq, however, is largely irrelevant – what matters is the authenticity of quotes from Iraqis, who, he says, he ‘spoke to every day by email’. And yes, some of his economic statistics are occasionally wrong.
The answer to this is not, however, to accuse him of being an ‘Aristotelian Mythologos’ as the blog Harry’s Place has hyperbolically and hysterically done. Nor is it to make the ridiculous comparison with Jayson Blair, a journalist who claimed to have visited places he hadn’t. Nor is it for Johann to throw up his hands and claim that journalism isn’t the profession for him. It is, instead, to do what Johann often does, which is to humbly admit his mistakes and correct them publicly. ‘All journalists are making judgment calls on the basis of partial imperfect information, and on that basis what you have to do is set out your thinking honestly. If the basis to that argument goes wrong then explain where it went wrong and why’ Johann said in an interview with Xtrra magazine.
Indeed, threaded densely throughout Johann’s work is a near-reverential respect for the empirical method, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and an emphasis on the importance of admitting your mistakes. Not one to make a glib point, Johann’s columns are packed full of references to academic research, on-the-ground interviews with those he’s writing about, and, on his website, links to critiques of articles. ‘The meaningful question about any human being isn’t: does he get things wrong? With these limitations, we will all make big mistakes. The real question is: does he take the time to understand his mistakes and learn from them?’ he said a in a beautiful piece about intellectual error. This humility was demonstrated most admirably in his mea culpa over Iraq: ‘What I learned from that awful mistake – the true factors that drive US and UK foreign policy, rather than propaganda claims – have led me, I think, to positive insights since. If I had instead run from the error and insisted it wasn’t there, I would be stuck in a bloody blind alley, devoid of insights’ he explained.
To some extent, Johann is a victim of his own success. We progressives know that, alas, the tabloids and right-wing broadsheets cannot be relied upon to provide accurate information. We rely on the likes of Johann, therefore, to provide us with what we don’t find elsewhere. And, because he is one of the of the few columnists worth reading in the mainstream press, I doubt anyone would have noticed had this happened with anyone else. That’s why, painful though I’m sure this affair has been for him, he will come out of it an even better journalist than he was before: fully-referencing his articles online, in the style of George Monbiot.
Because the truth is that, if his return were not to succeed, it would be a massive, massive loss to progressive journalism. To take just two examples: climate change and tax evasion. On climate change, Johann has been one of the most robust, informed voices on this, the biggest threat humanity faces. He has written very vivid, moving portraits of how climate change is already affecting populations in Bangladesh, Sudan and the Arctic, brilliantly fleshing out the dry statistics into images and stories more easily comprehensible to the reader. And, in a brilliant article for the Nation, he exposed the corruption at the heart of some of the most famous environmental organisations: paid by the fossil fuel lobby to give a green sheen to dirty fuel. On tax evasion, too, he played no small part in the creation of UK Uncut – one of the most exciting activist groups set up in response to Cameron’s axe-wielding frenzy – taking the now-famous story of Vodafone’s 6bn pound tax rip-off from the pages of Private Eye, and writing about it in his column, later publicising the very first action on his twitter stream, telling people to look out for the famous ‘orange umbrella’.
Pre-election, he was one of the very few journalists giving us a serious warning of what a David Cameron premiership would mean for Britain. He warned Cameron would oversee a collapse in economic growth – it’s coming to pass. He warned Cameron would scrap the EMA – it’s coming to pass. He warned Cameron would oversee a rise in homelessness – it’s coming to pass. And on and on. Today, he is one of David Cameron’s most penetrating critics. We need him.
His Orwell Prize, too, was thoroughly well-deserved. While many journalists could talk about nothing but Gordon Brown’s tantrums, shaking hand, and quivering jaw, Johann was pouring over his intellectual influences, giving us an account of how James Maxton, Adam Smith and Gertrude Himmelfarb have shaped our former Prime Minister’s thought. A scathing article on Liberal Conspiracy accused him of misinterpreting a handful of court judgments in Germany as representative of a general phenomenon, failing to point out that Johann quotes from Germany’s then Minister for Integration, Armin Laschet, saying these were “the last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by the German courts”. His article on King Abdullah al-Saud’s state visit to Britain gave us a valuable insight into the horrifying geopolitical realities behind the ceremonial hand-shakes.
There is a thoroughly misguided viewpoint being put forth from some quarters that one is only qualified to become an opinion-journalist if one has worked one’s way up from modest beginnings as, say, a court-reporter for a local paper. But the truth is there is a market out there for commentators who are capable of processing large quantities of academic research quickly, and condensing it into compact, readable essays which put the news in context. At this, Johann truly excels.
Young, talented, frustrated reporters have an understandable sense of injustice. But far from directing their anger at a man who thoroughly deserves his success and status, they ought to be channelling it towards the upper-middle class, journalistic non-entities of which the British press is chock-full. I realised that if you want to become a journalist, you have to work unpaid in Central London for as long as two years… ‘ (thankfully, Johann got a lucky break) ‘There are a lot of better writers than me out there – people who deserve to win this prize – who fall at that hurdle.’, Johann said in his Orwell Prize acceptance speech.
But if none of this convinces Chris Blackhurst and colleagues to welcome Johann back, let me appeal to their baser instincts – their instincts for cold, hard cash. The Independent’s daily circulation figures currently stand at around 180,000, and falling. It won’t be long before it tanks. And left-wing journalism, by its very nature – challenging wealth and power – does not usually make much money. It is, therefore, a testimony to Johann’s talent for producing lively and provocative writing that he has managed to become the Indie’s star-name. Johann himself will be okay – his undeniable talent will ensure he is snapped up by another British magazine or American periodical. But if Chris Blackhurst and colleagues want to maintain their comfy jobs and comfy salaries for a few more years – they will welcome Johann back with open arms.
David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, told a Zionist Conference in 1937 that any proposed Jewish state would have to “transfer Arab populations out of the area, if possible of their own free will, if not by coercion.”[8]Report of the Congress of the World Council of Paole Zion, Zurich, July 29-August 7, 1937, pp. 73-74.
We were told not to try to speak to Ben Gurion, but when I saw him, I asked why, since Israel is a democracy with a parliament, does it not have a constitution? Ben Gurion said, “Look, boy”-I was 24 at the time-“if we have a constitution, we have to write in it the border of our country. And this is not our border, my dear.” I asked, “Then where is the border?” He said, “Wherever the Sahal will come, this is the border.” Sahal is the Israeli army. Article by Naim Giladi, author of Ben Gurion’s Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, http://www.real-debt-elimination.com/real_freedom/Propaganda/false_flag_attacks/false_flag_attacks_on_jews_in_iraq.htm
Obviously you do, “Geraldine.”
Wow! You lot, get over yourselves, who gives a shit!
I do not consider my self ‘on the right’ but nevertheless I was appalled by what Hari did. It wasn’t just the odd mistake by a guy who is basically decent. The Wikipedia edits were malicious, planned and carried out over a long period of time.
As for owning up to his mistakes, he only admitted he was David Rose when he had absolutely no choice left. Even when the Wiki moderators exposed the fact that his IP address was from the Indy, he still tried to cover it up by pretending that Hari had got him (i.e. the fictitious Rose) a job there.
No, the Wiki edits were the work of a weird, scheming, nasty guy who had a well thought-out and sustained campaign to hurt others.
It is thoroughly astounding that he didn’t get the sack and I for one will not be buying the Indy again.
I notice Stuart is STILL spamming this “article” to the great and the good on twitter.
I suppose that’s good because now they can read all these comments pointing out how crazily illogical his position is.
But it’s also bad because there’s just no way Johann could not know that his “friend” has been conducting this campaign. So I guess he approves of what Stuart is saying, these lousy arguments that are full of the “what aboutery” and logical flaws that he himself used to rail about when others made such bad arguments?? But it’s different, obviously, when they’re made by him or in his service. Yet another thing to add to my disillusionment.
I find your defence really strange, and sad. And your depiction of critics of Johann Hari’s work as vengeful right-wingers totally bizarre. I hate the hounding of any individual and I wish Mr Hari all peace in his future life. It’s just that he did so many clearly wrong things professionally – and persistently, over a number of years – and he not only damaged his own reputation, and the reputation of the Independent (who I think are hugely at fault for not dealing with the matter honorably), but has also damaged the causes he espoused by association. Anything he writes in the future will be hobbled. Can’t you see that that might bother people on the left even more than others?
And I say this as someone who really can appreciate his writing skills, and who shares many, if not most of his political positions. But I now would never trust a single thing he wrote – however many footnotes he supplied – and I am someone who is wholly supportive of many of the causes and positions he has espoused (and I appreciate what you said about how his work personally affected you). But can’t you see why many people simply crave honesty and clarity in journalism (and not just rightful passion) and have totally lost faith in him? To be honest, I lost respect not so much because of the unprofessional things he did but because of the tenor of his explanations/apologies as he simply struck me as being wholly detached from truth and decency. He did not apologise in an honest way – still seemed to be trying to gloss and spin.
It’s strange but I have become, unwillingly, unable to ignore this issue – not because I bear Mr Hari any personal malice at all (in fact it seems to me his friends can’t be advising him kindly or well), or because I don’t have many other causes to be interested in, and of course the Daily Mail is infinitely more heinous etc. etc. – but because it makes me feel queasy that left/liberal journalism has been damaged by this case and that there seems to me to have been a kind of collusion with it on a lot of fronts, which smells of a hateful corruption. To feel uncomfortable about such protracted bad faith is not ‘overblown’.
Actually, I don’t know why I’m writing this at all as Tim Hardy wrote an excellent and thoughtful response early on in this thread and you seem to have ignored it. Maybe I’m just driven by a frustration that this affair is still going on in horribly muddied waters and a basic sense of what is acceptable seems to have been lost in the murkiness. It is not at all a case of judging or hounding a fellow human being, but of simply wanting good and trustworthy journalism. Your final appeal to the ‘baser instincts’ of the Independent says a lot about the debasement of journalistic values in the current celebrity culture that I fear played a big part in derailing Mr Hari.
Nice of Joanne Oldale to worry about my hair loss and other more serious issues.
Sadly it is too late for me to benefit from Johann’s glowing kindness and compassion.
I’m already old and bitter, and will doubtless end up as one of those warped, twisted characters one reads about, who feel driven to relentlessly and anonymously abuse other people online, before kicking back and penning some underage incest erotica to relax.
@Might I advise the naysayers above that vindictiveness is really bad for your health.
Might I also say that delusion is bad for your mental health as well?
I’m stunned to read dear Stuart saying on twitter that he can’t understand how any lefty could refuse to support Johann.
Would he not sneer at any rightwingers who refused to criticize a Richard Littlejohn (hypothetically) found guilty of plagiarism and online multiple personality disorder on the grounds that all rightwingers must stick together? I would.
Defending Johann without addressing what he has done harms your credibility and claims for objectivity. It makes you look tribal/clannish. You are doing immense harm to your cause by refusing to acknowledge what he has done.
Joanne: “Might I advise the naysayers above that vindictiveness is really bad for your health.”
Indeed. Take it to extremes, and you end up spending Christmas Eve maliciously re-editing people’s Wikipedia pages. Trust me, you really don’t want to go down that route.
To summarise your “defence” – “he’s gay! he’s left-wing! And so am I! And we’re personal friends!” The article completely downplays the Wikipedia smearing of others.
Any defence that uses the word “I” fails.
Obviously the case against Hari callapses under the sheer weighty logic of such posts as the immediately foregoing. That’s it – I’m taking out an Indy subscription for each of my friends and family now. Keep up the good work, Joanne.
The very fact that the likes of Ambrose and Lurker are wasting so much of their time on this kind of hate campaign means that Johann has been making quite an impact over the last few years. Keep up the good work Johann. Judge a man by his friends…. or his enemies? Either way… Johann is clearly on the right path. Might I advise the naysayers above that vindictiveness is really bad for your health. it can cause all sorts of illnesses from hair loss to more serious issues. Peace and love.
When another infatuated apologist for ‘Johann’ stumbles across the debate, it’s not surprising that people now make the weary assumption it’s D.Rose by any other name, again.
I’ve no doubt you’re a real boy, not a wooden puppet. But I’ve also no doubt that your hagiographical article is closer to Mr Hari’s view of himself than are most of the other articles about him recently. I think your/his view is desperately self-deluded.
‘this glowing kindness, this compassion that positively shines through his work’
Really? What most obviously shines through for this reader is his shrill, self-righteousness.
‘”attribution problem”‘
Ripping off an article from another publication but adding made-up names is an attribution problem? (Clue: no, it isn’t).
‘the accusations of fabrication do not carry weight’
Strangely, you find yourself at odds with almost all your commenters here. It’s a bit reminiscent of Hari’s grand proclamation: ‘even the slightest factual analysis of Private Eye ‘s retaliatory accusations causes them to immediately crumble into dust’. Saying it don’t make it so.
‘the worst that can be said about the editing of his own profile is that it was narcissistic.’
Depends if you think that’s worse than saying that it shows him to be systematically, shamelessly, tirelessly deceitful in the name of self-promotion. I think the extensive, elaborate lying is worse, because it throws into doubt everything else he writes. Even beyond his, er, attribution problem, is anything he says trustworthy?
We know he will readily invent facts and mouthpieces to back up his own positions. Why do we think he will restrain this tendency in his published articles, being as we already know he has a flexible attitude to documentary accuracy in journalism.
Harry’s Place ‘hyperbolically and hysterically’ laying into ‘Johann’? What I saw of their coverage conveyed weary, cynical amusement rather than the frothing you imply.
‘On climate change, Johann has been one of the most robust, informed voices on this’
Mr Hari cited David Rose as an authority on global warming. If I were a global warming agnostic wanting to be certain that the ‘robust, informed voices’ are basing their robustness on actual scientific knowledge, I would not be reassured by this particular attribution problem.
The citing of David Rose means that even James Delingpole can now twit Mr Hari on global warming, as he has demonstrated. When you’re giving James Delingpole a way to win an argument, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
‘His Orwell Prize, too, was thoroughly well-deserved.’
*tumbleweed*
I’m sure The Independent will keep him on, and many of the people you’re tweeting your article to will retweet it to the heavens. Such guts, such honesty! Because even lies and the lying liars who tell them are fine if they’re on our side, clearly.
The only convincing defence I’ve heard of ‘Johann’ so far is that he’s not as bad as the Daily Mail. I readily concede that point. It doesn’t seem like much to sing hymns to, though.
You mean the Hari-Elton piece on HuffPo? Or is there another gem I’m missing?
The timing, just before Johann resurfaces with an article, is kind of suspicious.
Stuart and Jonathan and other “defenders”: have you noticed it is like a religion with you? You twist and contort yourself, make straw man and other logical errors, just to keep believing in Johann.
We actually got offered this piece about two weeks ago, so the fact that it was so close to the HuffPo piece is actually coincidental. There are plenty of people who, for some reason I can’t fathom, still seem to like Hari and are willing to ignore the evidence and continue to defend him. We don’t really need to look for any kind of conspiracy or direct influence from him to explain it.
So, Mr Rodger, you can confirm that you have not communicated with Hari about this piece?
Stuart – now that you’ve popped up below the line, are you going to address any of the comments flagging up numerous errors and omissions in your piece?
Or does your thesis “if your heart’s in the right place, who cares about facts?” apply across the board?
@ Stuart. Well, given Johann’s five year hobby of running elaborate sockpuppets, do you really think it’s paranoid to suspect his omnipresent hand in anything praising him?
Wow. Hopi Sen and Brian Whelan both suspectI was pushed/prompted into writing this defence. Paranoid and delusional much?
I’m curious – do you nominate yourself for the Orwell Prize? I noticed the Prize in one of its posts talked about the articles Johann submitted. But our friend David Rose on wikipedia was obsessed with making it known that Johann was the youngest ever nominee for the Orwell Prize. That implies he was chosen like an Oscar nominee…but did he actually nominate himself?
Rosie – I completely agree that the Independent must take a huge amount of blame for this fiasco.
Hari’s many, many shortcomings, be it his fondness for making things up (an issue first raised by Private Eye eight years ago), his uncanny ability to find conveniently anonymous people from all cultures and corners of the world with exactly the same tone of voice and liberal-left opinions as his, his woeful knowledge of economics and geography – all were known well before his downfall. And yet the paper continued to cosset him.
The thing that baffles me is that it doesn’t look as though his copy was subjected to even the most cursory fact-checking scrutiny. I know the Independent isn’t the New Yorker, but how much truly professional editing was ever applied to Hari’s columns? Or was he given some kind of fast-track dispensation as the paper’s Star Writer, whereby his pieces went straight from Hari’s own laptop onto the page?
Original post:-
Hari once attempted to sue Harry’s Place for libel when they drew attention to his non-truths. That was real brass neck on his part.
There are a couple of other points from the original post – that if the polemic is passionate and moving enough, never mind the facts. Well, that doesn’t work for me. If I’m moved to tears by being told of the plight of child chimney sweeps in England, and then it turns out that there aren’t any, I’m pretty cross about being duped.
Another plea in defence of Hari is that he was turning out so much work that mistakes were bound to be made. I think the Independent was at fault in sending out the Brilliant Writer to cover so many subjects. No-one can know everything. That must have made it tempting to fudge the facts and then cover the mess up with lashings of style.
@ Jonathan
The News International scandal is a much bigger story in the context of a serious issue of how much the UK’s politicians were Murdoch’s lackeys and how this has corrupted public life. I think it’s the biggest story in British public life in the last few decades. Hari is a small fish compared to this – but there’s no reason why he can’t be talked about. But I wouldn’t be here talking about it if the original poster hadn’t decided to defend him – so it’s not Hari’s detractors who have kept the story going in this instance.
It is clearly slanderous to falsely accuse Hari of editing his own wiki entry (and bizarre too, since I imagine he has better thigns to do than post critical things about himself!), so I have deleted that too. Wiki has strict rules about libel.
David r from meth productions 14:42, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Yep…. :
Jonathan – are you under the impression that you’re one of those people like Boris or Kylie who are recognisable purely from their first name? I’m afraid I don’t have the first clue who you are, which is a tad ironic given that you’re berating others for donning cloaks of anonymity.
Alasdair – that’s absolutely correct: the most forensically evidence-backed criticism of Hari has tended to come from people on the left, whether liberal like David Allen Green, Labour like Hopi Sen or SWP like Richard Seymour. Right-wing criticism, on the whole, has tended to be more superficially abusive, and therefore less cutting – in particular, the notion of Toby Young criticising someone else for sloppy journalism is laugh-out-loud funny.
Penelope – I particularly treasure the time when Hari claimed that it was entirely appropriate that his Wikipedia biography was longer than George Orwell’s.
There are two separate issues here – the plagiarism and Hari’s unhinged behaviour on Wikipedia.
The plagiarism is cheap – he stole the best work from others, embellished them with little gems like ‘he took a long drag on his cigarette and said ….’ purely in order to deceive. It wasn’t simply a case of forgetting to acknowledge copyright and sources. By attempting to make the quotations and paragraphs his own with his charming embellisments we can safely say acknowledging his sources was never on the agenda. He did all this to big himself up and make his ‘talents’ appear far greater than they were. Egotistical, cynical and really rather stupid.
The Wiki sockpuppetry shenanigans display the same flawed traits – the many conceited and narcissistic statements Hari made about himself under the David R alias are quite mind-boggling. The man has an ego the size of a small country – he declared himself at one point to be one of the great writers of our time. The vicious and self-righteous smearing of his detractors is more worrying – calling people ‘drunks’ etc – the sheer hypocrisy as David R accuses OTHERS of sockpuppetry and flouting the Wiki rules.
Not only is Hari professionally dead in the water – no-one believes a word the wally says anymore – I honestly believe he needs to discuss his Wiki exploits with his GP. No-one in their right mind sits up until the early hours of Christmas Eve editing Richard Littlejohn’s wikipedia entry and having faux discussions between his own fictional online personas.
The man’s an idiot. If the author of this blog wants to idolise a vicious, lying little cheat then fine – that’s up to him. I on the other hand expert my ‘heroes’ to have integrity and intelligence. Each to their own however.
I think its possible to disapprove of someone’s shortcomings and at the same time find the baying of the mob deeply unattractive.
“As for the whataboutery – as you put it – I’m simply wondering why the political right are so up in arms about one young and now disgraced commentator and so quiet about a far more serious threat to our democracy from a media empire.”
1. There’s a difference between claiming we should concentrate on greater threats…and launching a defence of Johann.
2. It’s irrelevant, whether or not Murdoch is worse than Johann. As Johann himself would say (were the issue not concerning him), it’s a “lame lame” argument. Would you say that because social injustice is so terrible in totalitarian states, we shouldn’t waste pages on discussing social injustice in the UK. There’s a case for being even harder on Johann than Murdoch, because he has betrayed the principles he extols in his writing. We KNOW Murdoch is evil. But I didn’t want to have to find out Johann could do such contemptible things.
3. I think most of his critics on these pages are actually on the left or liberal left. Like I’ve said elsewhere, I’m not sure where I identify, but Johann was the columnist I most agreed with. I used to love reading his pieces and checked far too often for updates. That’s what makes it just so appalling for me to find out what he’d done and how different the DavidRose!Johann is from the Johann I imagined through his articles. I can’t understand why fans/friends like you don’t see it too.
“I’d be a lot more impressed if more of his critics on these pages came out from behind their cloaks of anonymity. It’s easy to carp from behind a screen.”
lol!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 😀 That actually made me laugh, because of the UTTER IRONY re David Rose. Thank you for cheering me up, I’ve had a bad day.
But seriously, again, what a lame “argument.” You cannot defend Johann credibly, and so you have to resort to demanding all those who criticize him reveal their real-life identity? Right….
“You’re doing him no favours in the end.”
Sorry, forgot that I was his therapist. Nope, wait, actually no one told me in the first place.
I’d be a lot more impressed if more of his critics on these pages came out from behind their cloaks of anonymity. It’s easy to carp from behind a screen.
As for the whataboutery – as you put it – I’m simply wondering why the political right are so up in arms about one young and now disgraced commentator and so quiet about a far more serious threat to our democracy from a media empire, shorn of any semblance of morality, that has systematically tried to manipulate our political process and successive governments despite being owned by people who are neither citizens nor pay tax here.
I think there’s a line in the NT about beams and motes…
@Jonathon (and anyone else making this argument)
Can we please stop trying to present this as ‘the right’ attacking Johann. The original allegations were made by the (ultra-left) deterritorial support group over his smearing of Antonio Negri, in an article with a clear anti-communist bias which tried to present Negri as a murderer and terrorist. The political right may have subsequently got up in arms about this, but plenty of his critics (myself included) are definitely of the left.
The misattribution is bad, but frankly not that important, though the only thing he (and most of his defenders) want to talk about. The deliberate smearing of anyone more radical than himself and the atrocious behaviour on wikipedia have still not been dealt with in any even vaguely sufficient way.
@Jonathan, AGAIN…have you not read the wiki talk pages? It is far more than just a “wrong attribution” problem! Johann didn’t just show himself to be “young and stupid.” He comes across as completely self-obsessed, vain, petty, spiteful, aggressive, and manipulative. Which is in complete odds to the character he presents through his articles, the character you seem to be clinging onto. You’re doing him no favours in the end.
And re the Murdoch thing…aren’t you committing the “what aboutery” logical error that Johann hates oh so much?
Personally I prefer a society in which people are given the chance to redeem themselves, especially if they’re still young.
Frankly given what was going on across the Murdoch empire, hacking into the phone of a murdered schoolgirl for instance, Hari’s replacing duff quotes with better ones from other sources (albeit wrongly failing to attribute them) strikes me as small beer in comparison with the corruption of a media empire whose key people met with cabinet level politicians on a weekly basis and who clearly had a huge influence on policy.
Johann Hari was young and stupid. What was Murdoch’s excuse?
You have written a pathetic apology for a lying schmuck. Why on earth have you done this?
Probably not “coerced”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Stuart (and others) were given informal guidelines on what to say. He’s clearly a friend of Johann, and no doubt they’ve emailed/spoken to each other about the terrible injustice, etc, and why it is all so unfair.
After stumbling across this interesting article I’m now considering 4 options, was it:
1) a very subtle parody of a Hari sockpuppet?
2) written by someone Hari coerced into writing a blinkered defence?
3) written by some over-enthusiastic Hari supporter?
4) another Hari sockpuppet?
The stu_pot2 twitter account fawns over Hari for a long period so at first I thought it was a more sophisticated sockpuppet than Hari used previously.
A Stuart Rodger was arrested for attacking Nick Clegg with paint and has written for the Guardian so, if it’s the same Rodger, it’s not option 4 as he actually exists.
Option 3 seemed the most plausible but the final paragraph appears to have been drafted by the Hari/Independent version of Pravda so I’m going with option 2 – this has Hari’s fingerprints all over it.
Much like the infamous Zafio, who I also suspect is a contact of Hari rather than the man himself, the story is only being made bigger by these nefarious activities.
“There never was a £6 billion. An entire fabrication from start to finish from Private Eye.”
It was?!
Anyone wonder if this Stuart guy could be (or somehow connected with) Johann’s Zafio?
What about the incestuous gay porn?
“And yes, some of his economic statistics are occasionally wrong.”
Having read through a couple of years of his columns (picking out and examining only the ones that do use economics statistics) I think I only found one statistics which was correct. Which he then used four or five times and every time after the first actually managed to misquote himself.
“On tax evasion, too, he played no small part in the creation of UK Uncut – one of the most exciting activist groups set up in response to Cameron’s axe-wielding frenzy – taking the now-famous story of Vodafone’s 6bn pound tax rip-off from the pages of Private Eye, and writing about it in his column, later publicising the very first action on his twitter stream, telling people to look out for the famous ‘orange umbrella’.”
There never was a £6 billion. An entire fabrication from start to finish from Private Eye. So, you’re praising Hari for taking a fabrication and making it famous?
@Jonathan
He’d do best to save his talent with prose for novel-writing. No one will believe anything he says from now on, and anytime he expresses moral outrage at anything, people will laugh. Perhaps if he’d made a full and frank apology there might be a chance. But he doesn’t seem to believe he did anything wrong. And I suppose after six years of deceit and manipulation, it’s too hard for him to admit it all. If he were truly capable of changing, he probably wouldn’t have have done all the sockpuppetry in the first place.
Stuart,
interesting that you picked up on that David Ben Gurion quote. It caught my eye at the time so I wrote to Ilan Pappe to check it (as any good journalist might) and he write back “It is quite a famous quote and Ben-Gurion said in a speech to the executive of the Jewish Agency on 12 June 1938 and the whole speech can be found in the Central Zionist Archives.” I took that to mean that he thought the Ben Gurion quote was correct. Hey ho.
As for Johann Hari, I thought that Deborah Orr’s response on the radio in the days after the scandal broke was fair, maybe generous – that Hari had got ahead in the profession very young and hadn’t gone through the whole process of learning from his peers, let alone at journalism school.
I’m inclined to let him learn his lessons. The shrill criticism from the likes of Toby Young rings slightly hollow to me. yes, I feel let down, but Hari full throttle writes brilliantly. If he couples his undoubted talent with a rigorous adherence to proper practice he’ll be a far greater journalist that Young and half his fellows on the Telegraph’s comment pages could ever dream of being.
Sorry, I could have made that clearer: “gay” is included only for the purpose of specificity, since it is unlikely Hari would be penning or spreading straight stuff. We don’t of course know for certain whether he did either, but since it appeared under the address of one of his acknowledged sockpuppets I think it’s fair to ask.
“gay, racist, child-incest porn”
You’re making it sound as if the first adjective is as bad as the other two…
Er, that should be “aegis” and “David Rose “. You don’t like those typos, I got others…
Sterling work, Mr Sen. I suggest anyone who feels inclined to defend Hari should read your article and the comments below it first. Fascinating, like a slow-motion train-crash.
And did anyone ever get to the bottom (pun foreseen but otherwise unintended) of the disgusting piece of gay, racist, child-incest porn (“How my little brother learned to become a whore”. Nice, eh?) posted under the aegus of “David Rose ” (Hari’s most prolific sockpuppet’s e-mail address)? Odone writes about its discovery here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100096260/i-fell-out-with-johann-hari-%E2%80%93-then-david-rose-started-tampering-viciously-with-my-wikipedia-entry/
I mentioned it in my (unpublished and unanswered) letter to the Indie because now that we know Hari is David R[ose], and since Hari’s shrill and mendacious “arrest the pope, he facilitated the rape of your
children!” pieces appeared in their pages, I wanted to know if they’d addressed this matter in their enquiry.
If Hari really did post, let alone write, that bit of filth it makes him the most shameless hypocrite imaginable. If he didn’t, surely he and the Indy would want to clear it up? So far: radio silence.
Hi,
I’m the author of the “Scathing Article” on Liberal conspiracy mentioned above, (but not linked to : http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/07/31/johann-hari-and-the-article-for-speigel/ )
Just want to point out that the quote by Armin Laschet cited here as evidence of Mr Hari’s journalistic accuracy was taken, without attribution, from another article.
Hari: “Germany’s only state-level Minister for Integration, Armin Laschet, says this is only “the last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by the German courts”.
Der Speigel a month earlier “Armin Laschet, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from the state of North Rhine Westphalia, sees the Frankfurt ruling as the “last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by German courts””
In fact, almost every quote and example in the article was taken from the Spiegel article, (bar two, one of which was taken from a Nick Cohen book). Despite this, the facts were mangled and distorted.
Despite this, Mr Hari says he stands by his work. Outstanding work, indeed.
An ‘attribution problem’?
Wow. What a brassneck.
I have tried to imagine some of the phraseology Hunter S. Thompson would have used to describe a man like this but me being rather dull I keep coming back to: “If you consider the great journalists in history, you don’t see too many objective journalists on that list. H. L. Mencken was not objective. Mike Royko, who just died. I. F. Stone was not objective. Mark Twain was not objective. I don’t quite understand this worship of objectivity in journalism. Now, just flat-out lying is different from being subjective.”
or more succinctly: “he will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest.”
“I first stumbled across” starts this article. It is also the usual first salvo of a Johann Hari sock on Wikipedia, joining the discussion on the Hari talkpage
A heartfelt defence, but your head is in the wrong place.
The first duty of any journalist is to tell the truth. He told lies. As for his “very vivid, moving portraits” and “fleshing out the dry statistics into images” he did this about Muslim women’s rights in Germany. That is, he copied a piece from Der Spiegel, mangled the facts, and made up some names so that the reader would think he knew the women involved.
And his Minima Culpa apology? It’s hedged about with what a great guy he is really, and how it was only his own brilliance that brought him down. It was nauseating.
I thought his writing was a smart sixth former’s boning up on a subject and then throwing in a bit of passion and the odd fine phrase. Part of the reason for the schadenfreude at his fall is that he had taken a pompous lecturing tone from a high moral standpoint.
He’s made himself unquotable. You can’t ever say “As Chomsky said in his interview to Hari” because you’re using an unreliable source.
The Independent are idiots to keep him on. Other people rumbled him earlier, the Independent’s editors should have too.
I also really hope you are not Johann.
The author of this piece probably isn’t Hari, but this guy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/stuart-rodger
What about his character assassination of Negri? That was raised by DSG before the piece you mentioned. He took someone else’s quotes out of context to make Negri look like a murderer and a extremist.
It’s not the first time and to defend him because you agree with him is morally dishonest.
Have you actually read the wiki talk pages that show up all of Johann’s editing? It’s more than just him calling a pair of rightwingers homophobes under an alias or correcting mistakes on his own profile. It is YEARS of sheer deception and crazy manipulation. He comes across AWFULLY. It’s impossible to read those long archives without being struck by the sheer egoism, vanity, pettiness, immaturity, deceit and spite of David Rose. And as a fellow fan of Johann, those are not qualities I wanted to associate with him. For god’s sake, there are several cringeworthy times where he writes fake emails to and from himself, where “Johann” offers to buy “Dave” a pint and where he tells Dave not to bother editing his wiki! Even worse when “Jessica” appears. Not to mention where “Dave” demands apologies from those who suspect he is Johann, and in one case graciously accepts one.
And the sheer vanity where Dave shows emails from “Johann” just to get an unflattering picture removed. And “Jessica” pops up, and “Dave” and “Jessica” leave comments on each others talk pages just to prove they aren’t the same…
It is absolutely insane. The deceit is just appalling. It’s staggering that he doesn’t seem to recognize this at all in his apology. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and imagine that the Indy forbade him to go into the embarrasing detail in his apology, but sadly I can’t. He just doesn’t get it.
And he’s not going to if “fans” like you defend him. I didn’t want to believe Johann was capable of such deceit and spite, as like you I loved his articles on rationalism and human rights. But you know, that doesn’t preclude him being a total hypocrite. Which he is. I hope that one day he will admit to everything and apologize properly, but it looks like he still doesn’t see anything wrong with what he did.
“Indeed, threaded densely throughout Johann’s work is a near-reverential respect for the empirical method, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and an emphasis on the importance of admitting your mistakes.”
Yes, which makes it WORSE that Johann did all this. It’s why I didn’t want to believe it until I read the wiki archive for myself. The hypocrisy is sickening, and I feel all the more angry because I used to believe in him so much and loved his articles. It makes me feel sad and, yep, pretty damn bitter. And I believe now he has also done all those causes great harm, because who can believe the claims and quotes he provides? He’s shown himself to be vain, deceitful, and all too willing to bend the truth for his own purposes.
I also really hope you are not Johann.
Go read the pages if you still want to defend him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Johann_Hari/Archive_3
I agree with everything in this post.
And you can honestly trust what he says, can you? I can’t see how. Or is it “better Hari wrong than Delingpole/Cohen/Odone right”?
Perhaps I’m terrifically fogeyish, but I think the truth is more important than that.
My opinion (which the Indie refused to publish – the whitewash of Hari in their letters pages was a marvel to behold) is that he is an astonishing hypocrite – happy to dish it out without mercy to his political foes, but unable to admit any real wrong in his own misbehaviour except very grudgingly and under orders to try to save his own skin.
A very poor character.
I agree wholeheartedly with this article. Hari may have drifted under pressure, but even when he is wrong, he is still more inspiring and visionary than most of the smug elites that currently occupy FS.
Hari, I will read you any day of the week, anywhere.
It’s admirable of you to defend him on such compassionate terms and nobody can deny that the motives behind many of the attacks on Johann Hari are less than noble – but I fear you are being mislead by your admiration for his writing.
The first assertion is simply not true, the second does not follow logically from the first.
I do not deny that Johann Hari is capable of writing with great honesty about matters personal to himself, about his depression, his sexuality, his self-esteem. He’s clearly an intelligent, sensitive and charming individual and this shows in his work.
But he’s also capable of great spite and malice as the “David Rose” sock-puppetry illustrates.
But all that is irrelevant to the argument.
Johann Hari would make an extremely talented novelist but his credibility as a journalist is ruined.
Moreover, he has irrevocably harmed campaigns that have chosen to cite his articles in their press.
Can you honestly read any of his more dramatic pieces from the last few years again without asking yourself whether or not he has made it up? I can’t. And I doubt I am alone.
And he did this to himself. It wasn’t his enemies who caused this to happen.
I agree that he could potentially restore his reputation eventually if, after proper journalistic training, he strictly adheres to the standards set by Monbiot of citing sources and to his promise in future to share notes and recordings of interviews. How quickly people will be able to trust him again remains to be seen.
For now though, he has ruined his reputation and his credibility and he only has himself to blame for it. The Independent has also made itself look like a joke for failing to investigate earlier.
I think it’s wonderful that his work brought comfort and self-assurance to you when you were a lonely, frightened gay teenager. We should never forget how powerful speaking the truth can be – how the courage of one writer being honest about themselves can give hope to countless others who read those words. Whatever happens, he deserves to feel pride in knowing that he has changed at least one life for the better.
But he failed to live up to these standards when he started fabricating material to make a point or placing quotes lifted from books into the mouths of people he was being paid to interview. Whatever his motives, this was wrong.
Deluding ourselves on his behalf because we have liked his work only increases the harm that his behaviour has caused. It’s deeply unpleasant to watch the crowing of the right about the fall of a prominent speaker but it is dishonest to deny the truth.
It shows more compassion and respect both to Johann Hari himself and to the causes he has backed in the past to accept the reality of what has happened and move on.
“His technique involved more effort – not less.”
Seriously? That’s the argument? His technique could have involved running back-to-back sodding marathons, it still had nothing to do with the integrity of an interview.
I agree with Mr Ambrose. If you apply Hari’s own righteous analysis on himself, you come to conclusion that Hari’s a disgrace.
Also, there’s no mention of Nick Cohen in this article. Cohen’s Facebook was changed by Hari.
Despite Hari’s successes, he — like Andrew Marr — doesn’t have an journalistic integrity left. If the Indie had any sense, they would sack him a la HGNFY and Angus Deayton.
P.S. Whitewash doesn’t stick nearly as well as blue paint.
Is this post for real? Hari lied and lied and lied again – even creating several sockpuppets to lie to each other – all in defence of his lies against others. He’s bloody lucky not to be being sued. Who can believe a word he says now?
Every single confession and apology on every detail of his enormities has had to be wrung from him like blood from a stone – he even had to be told by Blackhurst he should return the Orwell, even although it was clear the prize committee would revoke it any way.
What kind of cheek does it take to quote his acceptance speech for that prize (“There are a lot of better writers than me out there – people who deserve to win this prize”) as evidence of what a good chap he is? He stole that prize from those better writers by his dishonest writing, as the Orwell committee themselves concluded. The sheer self-serving hypocrisy is staggering.
If Hari keeps his job with the Indy there are many people who will never buy it again – it’s credibilty is absolutely shot if it keeps him. Blackhurst knows this and is clearly uncomfortable with being expected by Whittam-Smith et al. to keep Hari on, let alone defend his worth.
Personal loyalty is a fine thing, Mr Rodger, but it is never well served by excusing the indefensible.