Haripology: Bury the Bodies and Walk Away
Johann Hari has apologised personally, and Twitter is currently full of people congratulating him on coming clean – again – just like after the last apology.
Here’s Sally Bercow:
That he might have failed to address everything that he has done hardly matters when compared to something else (the war, the war!), because he campaigns for particular causes, because he’s ‘better than other journalists’, or because he is a “brilliant writer” anyway.
This time Hari has admitted to two things ‘over the years’, reusing quotes (my response in italics):
The first concerns some people I interviewed over the years. When I recorded and typed up any conversation, I found something odd: points that sounded perfectly clear when you heard them being spoken often don’t translate to the page. They can be quite confusing and unclear. When this happened, if the interviewee had made a similar point in their writing (or, much more rarely, when they were speaking to somebody else), I would use those words instead. At the time, I justified this to myself by saying I was giving the clearest possible representation of what the interviewee thought, in their most considered and clear words.
This was debunked last time, and Hari is failing to recognise what he has done. He has also repeatedly lied about the context of quotes, which he has recorded as being given to him – complete with scene-setting little details. See, for example, Jeremy Duns’ comments.
He is also failing to recognise the import of taking a quote from up to five years before and transposing it into a different context, sometimes taking and people’s words and changing the meaning.
and anonymous, sometimes malicious, editing of Wikipedia:
I started to notice some things I didn’t like in the Wikipedia entry about me, so I took them out. To do that, I created a user-name that wasn’t my own. Using that user-name, I continued to edit my own Wikipedia entry and some other people’s too. I took out nasty passages about people I admire – like Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot, Deborah Orr and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
I factually corrected some other entries about other people.
But in a few instances, I edited the entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk. I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. I apologise to the latter group unreservedly and totally.
Does Hari really think that professional journalists, whom he has admitted to systematically smearing in the most public arena where their biographies appear, and whose careers he has deliberately sought to damage, are going to walk away quietly when he can’t even bring himself to mention names?
(These above are Cristina Odone and I think Nick Cohen, but there are plenty of others. There’s a lot of mileage in 890 contributions.)
Hari is taking some precautions, though, and has deleted certain articles from his own website- for example the one in November 2004 entitled “Johann accused of being part of a conspiracy by Cristina ‘madwoman’ Odone”, from his website.”
He has also excluded the whole thing from the Internet Archive, but you can read it all here.
Here, I’ll stay off Hari’s spamming of dozens of Wikipedia articles to promote his own website.
And Johann Hari says that the “worst part of this is for me” is the detriment caused to readers and fellow-campaigners:
The worst part of this for me has been thinking about two sets of people.
The first are all the readers over the years who have come up to me and told me they like my articles and believe in the causes and the people I’ve been championing. I hate to think of those people feeling let down, because those causes urgently need people to stand up for them, and they need their defenders.
Personally I’d say that’s partly the readers’ fault, especially where they believed alleged facts in opinon pieces uncritically, but it’s certainly true that there are a lot of deceived individuals out there. There are dozens of them posting “it’s all admitted, now lets move on” messages on Twitter this morning.
and to his work colleagues:
The second are the people here at The Independent, whom I have watched for the past eight years working phenomenally hard to get their stories right and to produce world-class journalism.
I am horrified to think that what I have done has detracted from the way they get it right every day. I am sorry.
That’s fair enough, if he means it, though the ‘new Indy guidelines booklet‘ will make them remember him every time they fill in an audit form.
But nary a mention of the real people who feature in his articles.
Though I’d say that the worst aspect is Hari’s complete non-concern for ‘little people’ and interviewees he has sensationalised, and into whose mouths he has put words they did not say.
How many of these have received blowback – from security forces or enemies – as a result of Hari’s inventions?
Johann is returning the Orwell Prize, but stands by his articles:
So first, even though I stand by the articles which won the George Orwell Prize, I am returning it as an act of contrition for the errors I made elsewhere, in my interviews.
Dishonest, and a mere gesture.
The last time I checked, 3 of the 5 submitted had been comprehensively demolished, and a fourth (about a trip to Greenland) contains at least one quote culled from a Guardian Report from around 2005.[Update: My memory here was actually the 3 pieces Hari submitted for the Martha Gelhorn Prize – The Eevils of Dubai, Greenland/Global Warming, and British ex-Jihadis. Of these, the Dubai piece has been demolished, and the Greenland piece contains the stolen Guardian 2005 quote. I have not seen an examination of the British ex-Jihadis piece.]
He’s going on a Journalism course:
I am going to take an unpaid leave of absence from The Independent until 2012, and at my own expense I will be undertaking a programme of journalism training. (I rose very fast in journalism straight from university.)
Possibly useful, as far as it goes, but you do not rehabilitate a decades long faker by sending him on a course, and it is not the qualification that creates the character or the drive to report accurately, objectively, and honestly. That only helps.
Laurie Penny has a journalism qualification – an NCTJ, and look at how vivid imagination she often has on display.
Does Hari have the personal character?
And he’s going to ‘footnote his articles’ when he returns:
I will footnote all my articles online and post the audio online of any on-the-record conversations so that everyone can hear them and verify they were said directly to me.
This is the one aspect I find encouraging, but that is a matter for the Independent, which published perhaps 1000 articles by Hari.
When he wrote them he was acting as their employee; when they published them they took responsibility.
When Jayson Blair, the New York Times faker who was of nowhere near Hari’s seniority, and worked there for 4 years not a decade, and had a comparatively small quantity of 600 articles published, imploded, the New York Times put on a major investigation and published a 7000 word front page story. And that what when they’d found only about 40 articles with problems.
The NYT called it “a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.”
And the Independent are calling it “a private matter“.
Overall that isn’t going to hack it, nor should it.
It’s still all about Johann. It’s all about his friends, his colleagues, and his fellow travellers. It’s about saving face for the Independent, covering Simon Kelner’s – the editor throughout Hari’s employment – backside, and letting business continue as usual.
Hari appears not to give a toss about those who are the real victims of his journalism – the people who’s words he has invented or sensationalised.
He has specialised in campaigners as well as celebrities. How many of his interviewees, whether for set pieces, or ‘little people’ he identifies by name as props in his stories, have had sensationalised words they did not say read back to them in police stations?
An Independent colleague can mope over the new ‘guidelines’ at the local pub; not so the people in the stories.
The Independent itself has said nothing about Simon Kelner’s dodgy editorial practices. They didn’t have in place systems to stop the paper publishing so much imaginary, exaggerated or simply made-up material.
And Simon Kelner himself has said nothing about his statement on National Radio (Radio 4, the Media Show) that the Independent had never received a complaint about Hari’s articles. This statement is untrue, or as Splintered Sunrise puts it a little more strongly, a Black Lie:
Simon Kelner’s assertion that, in ten years, nobody had ever complained about the Hari column is a black lie.
So where does that leave it?:
- Hari is not facing up to everything, and does not seem to have even perceived what he’s done.
- The Independent is – so far – attempting to cover up the damage.
- Simon Kelner is cowering in his office with a dictionary down his trousers.
Does it matter? One question:
Do 1500 articles riddled with unidentifed misrepresented facts, made up or copied quotes, and untrue smears, in a national newspaper, by a columnist who has been treated as an authoritative source (by some people) across the world, matter?
All this exists in the Independent’s archive, and on their website, but they seem – so far – not to care, and not to think that it has anything to do with them.
And Hari will – again – be held to account by media people who care about standards, and legal people who care about law, not by political allies who care more about their political causes.
Meanwhile, he keeps digging down in the hole where he buried his reputation.
Perhaps he should take his journalism course in Australia.
[Update: Johann Hari supports this article]
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September 15, 2011 at 14:03 -
Without Hari the Independent is just boring. He brightens up the dreary rag – so what if he’s a fiction writer not a journalist?
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September 15, 2011 at 15:15 -
Because the central role of the media shouldn’t be to entertain, but to *inform*.
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September 15, 2011 at 15:53 -
See Minekiller’s comment below
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September 15, 2011 at 18:01 -
Goodness. I am completely swayed by that facetious comment. My opinion has turned around about in literally a few moments.
Whether or not the Independent is a ‘work of fiction’ – something I doubt, at least a little, though I don’t read it – has no bearing on my central point. Viewing the media as ultimately a source of entertainment is to trivialise a central plank of democracy. If you want to be able to form reasonable opinions on a rational basis, you need access to facts.
Too bad if it’s boring. Mind you, I suppose you can always turn to the red tops for a swift fix of flesh-and-flash.
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September 15, 2011 at 18:41 -
That’s the central point, isn’t it – “access to facts”. Not access to doctored or embellished facts. Not access to plagiarised and re-hashed facts.
If journalism becomes a smoke-and-mirrors exercise like the worst sort of politics has, then journalism is of no more value than political spin.
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September 15, 2011 at 18:47 -
On that point I’m hearing interesting reports of the success of the I version in the area.
Shops in not exactly Independent-style areas have big piles of it.
It is the price (20p) partly, but worth watching.
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September 15, 2011 at 18:51 -
Lighten up Shaun – my original light-hearted comment was not serving of such analysis. But a newspaper which chooses to continue to employ Hari, after studying the plentiful evidence of his, er, tabloid attitude to truth, deserves a little ridicule.
I don’t read the Indy or the red-tops, but sometimes look at the Guardian for aversion therapy.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:10 -
you should realise by now, that those on the left in the chattering classes, feel any subterfuge is acceptable , any untruth is justified, so long as it inclines the common man to take their view as the correct one.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:28 -
Grannie always said not to believe what you read in newspapers.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:33 -
I’m really very sorry.
I will never, never use quotes that I’ve just read somewhere, again.
I’m promise you that I’m never, never again going to give you up
Never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry. Never gonna say goodbye.
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.Thank you for your tears.
J.Hari-
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September 15, 2011 at 16:06 -
Try learning shorthand and you might find your interviews are that much clearer.
Yup – proper journos really should have 100 wpm written in a notebook and not on tape or scribbled down from memory after the event – just remember what that did to Andrew Gilligan.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:35 -
They’ve already got his name down for the Booker Prize shortlist in 2012.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:40 -
In the racist gay incest porn niche. Shortlist of one.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:42 -
I posted this on the DT.
The man is a fraud – a sociopathic fraud.
He personifies the fundamental dishonesty of the left – along with many other members of his side of the commentariat, he lacks a moral compass, scruples and personal honour.
Yet, hobbled by the huge ego that is characteristic of such ‘stars’ of the written word, such people have convinced themselves – and each other – that their Fabian aims are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; and that consequently, any means justify their ends. They have a monopoly on goodness, only they can be altruistic, only they really care.
They are crude propagandists with messiah complexes – and due to their status as quasi-shamen of the leftist cult, they are excluded from abiding by the demands of their dogma……..after all, trying to propagate goodness in the world is a tiring and emotionally wearing business – allowances must be made for them to enjoy comforts and privileges that must be denied ordinary mortals.
Like a kind of reverse noblesse oblige, it is incumbent on their followers to ‘understand’ that the creative thinkers who have derived and preached about the practices, behaviour, duties and codes that left-wing philosophy expounds, are not bound by them. Their work is ‘too important’ to live by the rules.
Life is hard, but we must all be grateful that the likes of Hari, Toynbee, Monbiot and Alibhai-Brown are willing to work hard to educate the ‘amoral majority’.
Hari will be back………the left can never admit being wrong. That he has not personally apologised to Odone, Cohen et al says everything one needs to know.
Hari lies between the pavement and a dog turd.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:48 -
Excellent comment Spiral Architect – a lot of thought went into that.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:52 -
Not really………….it’s been brewing for years.
See no piece on CIF about Hari………imagine if it’d been Delingpole.
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September 15, 2011 at 16:09 -
Great article followed by a great post by Spiral Architect. Both pieces saved me one helluva lot of typing. The self-righteousness of the Left is both shocking and nauseating.
Hari used to reply to the odd post by me, which at the time I respected but, eventually, he started to delete some of them instead; and this despite NEVER swearing, indulging in personal abuse or writing anything without having plain facts as back-up. It got so bad that, in the end, I was effectively barred.
What a horrible little man.
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September 15, 2011 at 14:57 -
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September 15, 2011 at 15:07 -
What is the problem here? The Indy is a work of fiction, so Hari is in exactly the right place. Leave him there.
An endorsement from Sally Bercow is a credibility kiss of death.
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September 15, 2011 at 16:52 -
Beat me to it.
But that she, Hari, and a rather unhealthily influential but small group of like-minded folk have and some still control a ton of commentary across the media estate is a worry.
Newsnight & the Vine Show will be spoiled for choice of ‘experts’ for months.
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September 15, 2011 at 19:29 -
I thought the “H” in IMHO was the funnies part of her tweet.
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September 15, 2011 at 19:33 -
funniest, even. Dodgy keyboad
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September 15, 2011 at 15:13 -
p.s.
Didn’t Kelner also engage Jody ‘rise up and beat the Feds’ McIntyre for the Independent?
Lumme – nothing like a couple of posing leftie wannabe revolutionaries to raise the circulation eh?
What’s wrong? Clegg not ‘rad’ enough for the 21st century?
McIntyre – Wolfie Smith to Hari’s George Orwell……..whooooooo hooooo hoooooo whoooooooo hoooooooo hoooooooooo.
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September 15, 2011 at 15:43 -
The first paragraph of Hari’s apology had my eyebrows reaching for the ceiling:
‘I’ve written so many articles over the years laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of other people. This time, I am writing an article laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of myself. If you give it out, you have to take it. If you demand high standards of others, you have to be just as damning when you fail to uphold them yourself.’
Well get you!
Messiah complex, sanctimonious, pompous, fake apology…. ‘if you demand high standards of others’ ?? how do I indicate spluttering?? sstthhppfffttttt ..!!..!!gahhh-
Clearly Mr Hari didn’t demand high standards of himself, ever. This wasn’t just a one-off failure. This was repeated cheating. The very pettiness and laziness of his behaviour actually makes it WORSE. ahhhhrrrrrggghhhh.AND THEN he writes (yes, he has drafted this, edited it, fine tuned it and then been allowed to published it): ‘I did two wrong and stupid things.’ No, you did several wrong and stupid things… over and over again. They were also unprofessional, cheap, immature, snarky, libellous, dishonest and shameful.
His solution? Oh – he’ll go on a course. This wasn’t professional incompetence. This was a fundamental failure to recognise right from wrong. Children have more of a moral compass than this. The smug, self-congratulatory tone of ‘I rose very fast in journalism straight from university’ is terribly revealing. Johann loves himself, he loves how talented he is (everybody says so), how precocious he is, how he is sooooo clever he didn’t have to do all the dull things the little journos had to. If ever there was an object lesson is what happens when someone is promoted too far too fast, Johann Hari is it.
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September 15, 2011 at 16:31 -
Mr Hari – you Sir are a damned disgrace. Around this planet there are men and women plying their craft as writers and journalists who put their lives at risk on a daily basis. Many have lost their lives in pursuit of something that you will never ever recognise – namely the truth.
That you Sir dare to associate yourself with these brave men and women I find disgusting. The same judgement applies to that travesty of a newspaper – the Independent. Truly you deserve each other.
I have to hand an autobiography written by one of the finest journalists this Country has ever produced. “Point of Departure” by the late James Cameron. I suggest you read it. Having done so – even you might feel constrained to seek some form of alternative employment.
Spiral Architect: An outstanding comment Sir / Madam. -
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September 15, 2011 at 16:50 -
I for one look forward to every online appearance of the fraudster, plagarist & confessed liar Johann Hari.
Every opportunity to remind him of his fraud, lies & theft of the work of others in the comments section of his pieces will be taken.
I am assuming of course that he will be allowed comments section – or will the disgraced & widely ridiculed Indy stop all interaction with the readership – just in case?
The left have just shown how utterly bereft of principles, honour & standards they are.
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September 15, 2011 at 17:05 -
It’s taken three months for Andreas Whittam Smith to carry out his investigation into Hari’s journalistic standards. The process didn’t involve talking with any of the people who he harrased, plagerised, or libelled. So you have to wonder why it took Mr Smith so long to carry out the investigation.
Compare and contrast with the New York Times who carried out an investigation into a journalist (Jayson Blair) with the same standards as Johann. It took them a couple of weeks and the journalist was fired. They NYT said it was the low point in the newspaper’s history but they have now recovered – because they took the right step.
The independent will probably* not recover because they haven’t followed the first rule in handling a PR disaster. Acknowledge the problem and show that you have learnt by it. They haven’t acknowledged the problem and by not sacking Johann they are showing that they haven’t learnt either.
Conspiracy theories will start to crop up because of the “transparent” way in which it was carried out. Does Johann have something on Andreas? Are they lovers? Is Andreas a fool who thinks the end result matters no matter how you arrived at it. Is Johann such a sociopath that he has managed to pull the wool over Andreas and Simon’s eyes?
* I say probably because the vast majority of Indy readers will probably not be following the Johann case at all and will not realise that he so far below the gutter press as to be in the sewage farm and so will carry on reading the paper.
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September 15, 2011 at 17:11 -
I’d have expect AW to be the one who would care most, as he founded a very good paper. But he’s let himself down this time.
I still have issue 1.
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September 15, 2011 at 19:52 -
Not the most impartial person to check out JH then. Like any parent, he should be willing to let his child go and stand on it’s own feet. By being overly protective of the newspaper born from his loins (so to speak) he’s probably damaged it more than if he let the JH debacle get sorted out quickly, all the facts shown, kicked out JH, and let the proper journalists at the Indy take it on to new avenues. Those proper journalists are all probably lining up to stab JH in the back when he comes back from his US training course.
PS. He’s paying for the course himself, but what about living costs. Can he afford that whilst not getting paid? Is someone supporting him?
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September 15, 2011 at 17:49
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September 15, 2011 at 18:18 -
Dear Anna, always enjoy your posts! As to JH… Every part of the political spectrum has its characteristic faults and JH belongs with PToy et altri on the self-righteous , conceited left: characteristics that real workers (coal miners, dockers…) to their left or Blairites to their right have conspicuously little of.
When everything went horribly wrong for JH a few months ago I followed the story carefully and with horrified fascination. I felt, on some level pity for the man, he was being humiliated very publicly: yes, he deserved it but Wikipedia and gay incest porn… It was a horrible laying bear of a human being.
However, I also wondered if there wasn’t going to be an interesting ‘narrative’ here. After being taught a nasty lesson JH would remake himself. He was young and his most annoying vice, that insufferable holier than thou tone had surely been punctured for good. He might float to interesting places and do worthwhile things.
There were rumours about depression: a good sign I thought, the tectonic plates are shifting… He was never going to vote for the ‘right’ party. But at least he would be a little more patient with others. He might mellow into an interesting writer. And slowly – the Independent would never keep him on obviously! – he’d make his way back into journalism and represent an important part of the general public with a little more wisdom and modesty than he has previously shown and be more effective as a result. Everyone deserves a shot at redemption.
What strikes me most of all about his apology is how stupidly wrong I was. It is the same old JH. The plate tectonics have not changed. They have just locked a little harder. He is as self-satisfied as ever and I don’t believe half of it. He has taken more time over the syntax than the content: not a very good sign when you are saying sorry, a time when rough edges mean something. He also qualifies and is constantly slapping himself on the back: he rose fast in journalism, his false modesty about his colleagues, his giving back the Orwell Prize as an act of contrition (wth!).
What I’m about to say now I don’t say as someone on the right, or someone who despises the ‘self-righteous left’ or even as a very part-time journalist. I say it as a human being to another human being: Johann, you moron, you had a wonderful opportunity here and you blew it!-
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September 15, 2011 at 20:13 -
And it’s the wasteful throwing away of that opportunity that so infuriates. He had a chance, he had the intelligence and raw writing ability to exploit it but was simply too arrogant and self-satisfied to put in the hard yards to learn his trade properly. And judging by this apology, he still doesn’t see that. Spiteful and anonymous editing and commenting on rivals and critics in public forums is just despicable. And I speak as someone who could see Christine Odone far enough.
Well said Beachcombing. -
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September 15, 2011 at 22:27
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September 15, 2011 at 20:29 -
From my experience the only factual journalism that I know is 100% truthful is a genuine workshop manual from Honda, Yamaha, Ducati, Mercedes et all and even then there are occaisional errors which can have expensive consequences, sure the style is very limited but at least you are getting the facts. It is a pity that so much MSM journalism is painted to the point of a murky brown. If there are three types of lies, white, grey and black, what colour can describe truth?
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