The Independent C/D

is that verbatim from your jesus interview I've stolen this joke off of twitter

oi you misquoted him

I haven't really engaged with this on Twitter TBH.

The defenders missed the point that it wasn't mass demonisation for the most part, just a hell of a lot of pisstaking.

That was my impression but everyone's Twitter timeline is different so it's impossible to generalise accurately. Certainly none of the people I followed were involved in a witch hunt - most were just making hashtag jokes and a few were serious, seasoned journalists making sound objections to the fact that his blog presented this as common practice, which it isn't. There was definitely a sense from some of his defenders of "we like him and agree with what he writes, therefore everyone attacking him is a bastard." I liked Deborah Orr, who's clearly a friend of his, taking time to argue with lots of different people and conceding that he had behaved badly while saying (rightly IMO) that it was naivete rather than malice.

think naivete is being kind, it's arrogance.

naïveté is what i initially put it down to...before i realised it's habitual for him

f you don't call people like Hari out then you don't really have the moral authority to criticise right-wing phone-hackers either.

And if you don't call out people like Littlejohn then you don't really have the moral authority to criticise left-wing..er..whatever you want to call him.

There was a lot of pisstaking but Guido and his sycophants smell blood.

He's a naïveté habitué. Think D.Orr was saying it was all a while ago when he was young and inexperienced (the plagriaism not the sleeping with a 'neo-Nazi')

Also if he's reasonably consistently not getting good enough quotes in interviews then maybe he's not a very good interviewer and the Independent shoud, y'know, send someone else.

He started very young and without formal journalistic training and, in my experience, editors never discuss ethics of interviewing because they assume it's a given, so I can easily see how someone could keep bending and bending the boundaries while thinking, "Hey, nobody's getting hurt." If you develop a bad habit in your writing early on it can stick for years until an editor or a fellow writer points it out. If he didn't think it was wrong in 2003, and nobody said otherwise, why would he think it was wrong in 2011?

Even being generous to him, though, where I think he really crossed the line was by taking quotes solicited by other interviewers - even now he's falsely claiming that he only took bits from the interviewee's own prose. The daft thing is that I bet he did have decent quotes he'd got himself but got obsessed with this idea that every quote had to be perfect. Maybe that happens if you're interviewing Negri - I never had that impetus when I was interviewing Xzibit.

He got big gigs out of university. There are more than enough people (nearly all women) who started in music press or whatever as teenagers who are around 35 now and did not have training on a journalism course either*. I'm pretty sure the women I'm thinking of are rigorous because of early angst about not being treated like a child in an office, and the sense that one has to be ethically correct on the page as proof that you can run with the adults and do just as well, if not better there, was probably motivating.

*one or two went to City after their careers were well-established and now work in news journalism.

lack of formal training is a good point - i've never had any either and while i know i can get good quotes i still have no idea how one is "meant" to do an interview - while you can get guidance from editors and others with your writing, it's not like you ever get to sit in on a top interviewer actually doing the thing, or get assessed by anyone yourself. having said that i don't think it's ever crossed my mind to pass quotes from other interviews off as my own - as dorian says the test of a good interviewer isn't just in the writing, it's in the ability to extract those quotes in the first place.

what makes it particularly egregious for me isn't just how habitual it seems but how he seems to lift CHUNKS of quote at a time, not just a turn of phrase here or a sentence there.

this is the last time i felt the need to go to a quote someone else had got previously, when i interviewed the-dream in 2009:

That said, he has been quick to stick up for Milian – to whom he announces his engagement a few weeks after the interview – against such accusations. With her own singing career stalled since her departure from Def Jam in 2006, hooking up with Nash, who will produce her fourth album Elope, and release it on his own Radio Killa imprint, has been a professional as well as personal boon – and inevitably, the claws have come out. In an interview with the Rap Radar website, Nash sprung to Milian’s defence in typically humorous fashion: “To clear this up, ‘Oh, she fuckin’ for tracks’ and this shit, I be like…It’s a recession, ain’t nobody got to fuck for tracks. We basically giving them away. When I started to really want to build my label, I went looking for her. She’s talented and a good person.”

a) credited
b) pretty funny turn of phrase
c) while i was interviewing him, christina milian was draped over his lap, so it's not like he'd have said anything like that to me

But surely it would just seem counterintuitive for a journalist to think that passing off a quote from another interview as part of your own conversation was an okay thing to do? I mean, why would anyone think that?

I'm separating this from people who do that knowing full well it's wrong but that they can get away with it, but I'm not sure I believe this naivete line.

Well I've never met the guy so I don't know, and it's totally counterintuitive to me, although appropriating uncredited old material is commonplace in music mag "making of" features where the artist is either dead or won't talk to you. I once filed one with all the credits in place and the subs removed them. Someone could justifiably claim to be misled by that, I guess. What's crazy is Hari HAD the access, he HAD roughly the right quotes, but he cheated in order to make them a little bit better.

The right and wrong is clear-cut to me. I'm interested in the psychology behind it. I like to think the best of people but the more examples I read (like the Chavez one in the NS, where he's lifted a quote from a New Yorker profile) the less sympathetic I become.

I worked on staff at the Statesman some time before Hari was there, straight out of university, but I was still in touch with the people there. And they complained about this bumptious kid who wouldn't listen to advice, tried to tell production journalists – whom he saw as inferior – what to do, and treated his time there as some kind of personal fiefdom. That sounds like arrogance rather than naïvete to me. And after his years on a paper, I don't think naivete would be an acceptable excuse. He's been on national papers longer than me; I never went to journalism school either; and if I tried blaming a professional error on naïvete I'd get very short shrift indeed.

^^^I hadn't heard anything like this before but if so... sigh. JH wouldn't be in a tight spot if he'd cited the writing as the subject's and then gone on to quote the subject affirming it in person.

Music mags covering the 'making of' usually attribute the old quote to the interviewer, if it enhances the brand. If not, or the writer left under a cloud, it's 'told the NME' or 'said Bono in 1992'.

If you're doing a big profile, part of that is gathering a consensus on your subject and attributing that. It lays out the reasons why they are significant and gives that significance context, because 'blah blah blah' said X in Time Magazine is not like 'blah blah blah' said X in Pitchfork. It's a gauge of newsworthiness and it comes in damn handy in 3000/w features where you're contrasting all of it with the iteration of the subject that you're meeting on the day.

Yeah, I know good and bad journalists who've had (and not had) formal training, I'm not convinced that's an issue.

(Inicidentally, though, I can vouch for the LA/Irvine story as he told me about it at the time, er, presuming he wasn't fibbing).

ok, interesting! it's weird though, he had a piece in the new statesman in july 2002 which mentions a trip to california, but it's just a mundane account of his visit to the richard nixon memorial library. it doesn't say anything about the much more intriguing infiltration of a conference of neo-nazis.

if he told you about it - and i don't doubt that he did - wouldn't he have told his editors at the new statesman? wouldn't they have wanted some copy about it? wonder what went wrong there.

There's something here, on some crazypants site: http://www.zionismontheweb.org/boards/viewtopic.php?t=353&view=next&sid=098fd3ec87ef14570137ab80a61c5de8

I can't believe Toby Young is still getting away with pronouncing on this. Surely his own history as a plagiarist is well enough known for one of his readers to point out? I registered with the Telegraph website to do so, but it won't let me comment.

There's something here, on some crazypants site: http://www.zionismontheweb.org/boards/viewtopic.php?t=353&view=next&sid=098fd3ec87ef14570137ab80a61c5de8

― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 29 June 2011 16:32 (Yesterday) Bookmark

i missed that, i was searching in 2002, having failed to anticipate hari undergoing a bizarre neo-nazi groundhog day. in december 2002, he wrote how he attended an institute for historical review conference "earlier this year":

I sat in rooms where sweet-looking grannies would rock slightly muttering, "Kikes, kikes" under their breath as they carried on knitting.

and then in july 2003, he writes about attending an IHR conference “on the weekend of June 21st-23rd this year”:

A sweet little granny is sitting next to me, knitting a scarf. She is listening to an elderly Professor who is delivering a speech about the Holocaust. Every now and then, at the most rousing moments of the speech, this tiny old woman will mutter her agreement. “Kikes,” she says absently as she nods her head, “dirty f***ing kikes.” Nobody objects; nobody even turns to look. This Nazi granny is amongst friends here.

these nazi knitting grannies are obviously hardy perennials. but the IHR didn’t hold a conference in 2003: http://www.ihr.org/main/conferences.shtml

meanwhile, “ross”, 23-year-old oregonian neo-nazi, becomes “russ gustavson, 22, from portland, oregon”, who describes himself as a “true socialist” with a black fiancee - but don’t let that stop you, johann! - and explains his presence at a holocaust denial conference by saying “when you get to the far left or the far right, things get pretty similar.”

the question for simon kelner, who says he’s never had a complaint about johann hari’s writing in ten years or however long, is why this story isn’t available any more on the independent’s website or hari’s own and instead we have to dig it out of obscure zionist forums?

I worked on staff at the Statesman some time before Hari was there, straight out of university, but I was still in touch with the people there. And they complained about this bumptious kid who wouldn't listen to advice, tried to tell production journalists – whom he saw as inferior – what to do, and treated his time there as some kind of personal fiefdom. That sounds like arrogance rather than naïvete to me. And after his years on a paper, I don't think naivete would be an acceptable excuse. He's been on national papers longer than me; I never went to journalism school either; and if I tried blaming a professional error on naïvete I'd get very short shrift indeed.

― Trudi Styler, the Creator (ithappens), Wednesday, June 29, 2011 3:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

the guy clearly has been in over his head since day one, but it's not really 'his fault': aged 22 of course he was. and yes, obviously, he is a moron for not thinking that making shit up is wrong. would shelling out for the city course educated him? mind boggles if that's the kind of level we're on here. it's really more that morons like peter 'star of david piercing the union jack' wilby and whatever fuckwit edits the indie felt he was a good bet. all the same, lol.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/guy-walters/2011/06/afghanistan-joya-women

This is getting ridiculous. I wonder if he's escaped this one or whether the pressure will keep up. I suspect the former.

how the hell did he think he could get away with it?

hubris

It beggars belief how he thought quote-lifting on this scale was acceptable. At first I thought it was only a handful of examples over several years but this is nuts.

as the NS blog implies, i don't think these quote-lifting pieces will dry up

Can someone elaborate about the alleged stat-fiddling in his recent "Muslims = homophobes OMG I WENT THERE" piece?

CORRECTION: This article originally said Tower Hamlets had the single highest rise in homophobic violence in the UK, when in fact it merely had one of the highest rises over the past decade. Credit to Peter Lilley for emailing to point this out.

It is also true there has been a slight fall in the homophobic violence there over the past two years, but this is almost certainly due to the fact that lots of gay people (like me) have moved out of the area. Horrific gay-bashings, posters calling for gay people to be killed, and people handing out leaflets demanding the death of gays will have that effect. To claim the driving out of gay people as evidence for a fall in homophobia is pretty perverse.

"Almost certainly"

here's some more shenanigans. this is from one of hari's orwell prize-winning pieces:

Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose.

The crux case centres on a woman called Nishal, a 26-year-old Moroccan immigrant to Germany with two kids and a psychotic husband. Since their wedding night, this husband beat the hell out of her. She crawled to the police covered in wounds, and they ordered the husband to stay away from her. He refused. He terrorised her with death threats.

[...]

A Lebanese-German who strangled his daughter Ibthahale and then beat her unconscious with a bludgeon because she didn't want to marry the man he had picked out for her was sentenced to mere probation. His "cultural background" was cited by the judge as a mitigating factor.

A Turkish-German who stabbed his wife Zeynep to death in Frankfurt was given the lowest possible sentence, because, the judge said, the murdered woman had violated his "male honour, derived from his Anatolian moral concepts". The bitch. A Lebanese-German who raped his wife Fatima while whipping her with a belt was sentenced to probation, with the judge citing his ... you get the idea.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-multiculturalism-is-betraying-women-446806.html

"a series of verdicts ... in the past month" - his piece appeared on 30 april 2007, but the "nishal" case took place in january, and was only publicised by her lawyer at the end of march, when the judge was sacked. ok, a bit sloppy. but according to der speigel, the "ibthahale" case was in 2005. the "zeynep" case was 2003, and was reversed on appeal in 2004. der speigel goes on to say "higher courts usually reverse these rulings", but hari doesn't mention that. the "fatima" case was 2002.

so he's conflated cases from half a decade into "the past month" and ignored the fact that in many of his examples german courts addressed his complaints, removing a judge, overturning decisions on appeal etc. it creates a completely misleading picture of german society.

it's not clear where hari got the names from, either. they're not in his acknowledged source, and the reporting on the supposed "nishal" case says explicitly that the woman's name wasn't released. it seems likely that he made them up for pathos:

Yes, it would be easy to keep our heads down, go with this multicultural drift, and congratulate ourselves on our tolerance of the fanatically intolerant. But I can give you a few good reasons not to. Their names are Nishal and Ibthahale and Zeynep and Fatima, and, yes, they were women.

Obviously the NOTW business has made this look like minor pissing about but under the latest story from Guy Walters in the New Statesman there's a comment which points out that he lifted lines from here and presented them as fresh quotes in this piece. And Hari's piece is, of all things, an attack on plagiarism.

Glad to see Private Eye noted the hypocrisy of Toby Young in this matter (no, I did not tip them off).

It was going around Twitter. He was an idiot for wading in there.

What I wish more left-wing journalists had done was say what you should in all plagiarism cases, ie, let's see what else emerges. This behaviour is invariably habitual so it was daft to try and explain away the first two examples that came to light as if that were the end of it. This Guy Walters seems to have a bit of a vendetta running but I think he's right to publish examples that people send in.

Nick Cohen talks about this today.

"David R"s edits on Wikipedia.

.. and David R's IP turns out to be from ... the Indy.

Re: Cohen. Hari's article on What's Left was entirely reasonable and Cohen's hysterical reaction was entirely in keeping with his general inability to cope with any criticism of his book, or anyone who dared to stick a pin in his self-image as heroic dissident. The allegation that Hari was behind those Wikipedia sabotages can't be entirely dismissed, but Cohen is given to distortion a lot of the time himself, so any allegations he makes must also be viewed with suspicion.

lol journalism

I've been involved in editing the Johann Hari wikipedia page, and have been struggling with DaveR as a fellow editor for a long time now. Although I thought he was Hari for a long time, I think he actually is a close friend of Hari's, called David Rose, who essentially writes and maintains puff pieces about Hari on the web, to maintain his web profile. Take a look (if you can bring yourself to) at the voluminous wikipedia Hari discussion pages.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Talk:Johann_Har

only thing worse than being johann hari, editiing his own wikipedia pages, would be being a fan of johann hari's, editing his wikipedia pages for free.

Indy suspends Hari

it's been a great week for fans of Karma

Hari Hari Hari Hari Karma

Re: Cohen. Hari's article on What's Left was entirely reasonable and Cohen's hysterical reaction was entirely in keeping with his general inability to cope with any criticism of his book, or anyone who dared to stick a pin in his self-image as heroic dissident. The allegation that Hari was behind those Wikipedia sabotages can't be entirely dismissed, but Cohen is given to distortion a lot of the time himself, so any allegations he makes must also be viewed with suspicion.

― Freedom, Friday, July 8, 2011 8:51 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

usually im not a fan of researching ur life ish but this is quite impressive:

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2011/07/who-is-david-rose.html

as people used to say about saddam, though, they'll only replace him with someone worse

i was at a party full of left-wing activist types last weekend (they were mostly very fucking dull), a good portion of which was spent, in tandem with anna f, haranguing some awful long-haired student type who was being a save-a-hari "because he's left-wing"

Not even true he's "left wing" IMO.

probably "left wing" in scare quotes will do, he trades on being ~On Our Side~ so much

i get pretty annoyed with people who can reduce their world view to nothing more than "left wing" or "right wing" though

Hooray, more work for Laurie Penny

I like that Nick Cohen article linked to above... it is very measured but makes wise points. I was a bit surprised to like it, as I had the idea that Nick Cohen is a bit rubbish. Oh no, maybe I am turning right wing.

I have to say, having worked in offices with both people -- not that this means really anything at all -- that Johann is a lovely bloke, and Nick Cohen is a horrible bullying arsehole. Just a proviso. The person is not always the work.