The Independent C/D

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/13/independent-editor-johann-hari-plagiarism?CMP=twt_fd

stoked for the madness

great headline on the print edition: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/george-osborne-feels-the-pain-of-dominatrixs-claims-2353648.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-personal-apology-2354679.html

what an amazing business journalism is. what do you have to do to get sacked? i don't really give a shit: the independent is a terrible newspaper and johann hari is about what its readers deserve, but at the level of curiosity it's not clear what he's done to inspire this leniency.

;dr

Well, I often enjoyed his articles in the past, but this is grievous, grievous stuff, the admission about the Wikipedia articles shocking in particular. As for the Independent, well, I haven't read it in a long while. They employ Patrick Cockburn, so kudos for that, but otherwise *shrug*.

@alex_macpherson Alex Macpherson
Lohan Hari RT @gervasedewilde hari's journalism course commitment is reminiscent of the redemptive spell in 'rehab' for the errant celebrity
2 hours ago via UberSocial for BlackBerry

it really is the most pointless thing though. wtf is this course going to teach him?

how to love

isn't it kind of like people taking remedial driving classes instead of getting points on their licence?

Such a weaselly apology. Should have been fired.

my fav bit of the apology:

(I rose very fast in journalism straight from university.)

:D

http://jamiemalanowski.com/blogwp/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dscn0497.jpg

i like how the last sentence of his apology implies that it's his readers that need retraining, not him.

I think that was a grammatical error...the emotion got to him.

just trawled through all the blog posts and wikipedia articles about this guy. have to say, I'm surprised no-one is talking about the paedo incest story he wrote in 2006. a pretty repellent piece of work and enough on its own to get him fired imo.

link?

it's mentioned at the end of this article:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100096260/i-fell-out-with-johann-hari-–-then-david-rose-started-tampering-viciously-with-my-wikipedia-entry/

link too long, sorry

There used to be an entire section on Littlejohn's Wikipedia page about his feud with Hari. I assume Johann wrote the entire thing?

I didn't know about the Wikipedia editing before, it kind of beggars belief that Hari could be idiotic enough to think that was alright. Think he's just so egotistical he didn't care.

or just thought he could get away with it

Good grief though Cristina Odone is a complete fucking bigot. I've only just reached the last paragraph.

Stay class Silvio, and Independent subs!

http://i.imgur.com/sn8NH.jpg

"Stay classy"!

I had never knowingly read Hari before I saw him on The Late Review. He struck me immediately as the kind of bitchy queen i've met too many of especially working in theatre. His extremely self satisfied demeanour and delivery is very off-putting too.

Best summary of the Hari affair yet

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/09/unethical-journalism

xp The Nifty Archive has it. It's pretty much a generic piece of underage MM porn.

http://nifty.nisusnet.com/nifty/gay/incest/little-brother-learned-to-be-a-whore

To be fair Matt, it doesn't make you a bigot to find a story about pimping out one's underage brother distasteful. She's not saying "gay people write paedo incest porn", she's saying "Hari wrutes paedo incest porn". Which, it appears, he does.

well, it appears he has written it in the past, not that he currently writes it.

i'd be pretty unimpressed with any company that fired a person for writing paedo incest porn under a pseudonym on the internet - i mean, that shit's embarrassing, but it's not exactly a crime.

i think if i ran a newspaper and my columnist 1) lied 2) stole 3) did malicious things on wikipedia 4) and lied about it and 5) wrote incest paedo porn, i think under those circumstances i would sack said columnist

i guess none of those things are 'exactly crimes'

i don't see how item (5) has anything to do with the other items, though? for one thing, that's the only item that's honest about being fiction.

because it's just yucky

well, i suppose it has to do with johann's credibility, like the others. but im not sure what you're getting at here. hari is unmasked as a liar, fuckwit, and all-round skeezoid, and keeps his job, but you're concerned that people he has libelled are bringing up the fact he wrote incest porn? idgi.

xpost

the racial element in that story made me o_0 more than...anything else

hari is an only child right?

hari is unmasked as a liar, fuckwit, and all-round skeezoid, and keeps his job, but you're concerned that people he has libelled are bringing up the fact he wrote incest porn?

hari should lose his job and be looked down on for his fabrication, plagiarism and hamfirsted attempts at defamation in the course of his job - that's something he has done that is actually wrong, that's something that's worth getting all morally righteous about. but getting all morally righteous because his tastes in kinky sex fiction are "yucky" is like getting all morally righteous because someone has acted in porn in the past, there's something really ugly about it.

xpost oh god lex you actually went and read it? you are a braver man than me.

it's ok to be yucky, but not ugly? hmm.

i didn't read but yeah im going come right out and say it: i think writing incest paedo porn should be discouraged.

i think there's something kind of... ugly about it bc im a terrible 19th-century-style moralist

i read it this morning because i'm in an office today and knew that if i was to ever click on that URL, in case people were gonna discuss the thing, it would have to be then

this is the faulty logic of pre-caffeinated mornings, rest assured i was punished for it

remind me to tell you what hari's been doing with himself while on suspension next time i see you btw

ooooh

(though if it involves writing politics-themed ~erotica~ i do not want to know)

not gonna lie, when i first saw that url the thought crossed my mind that it might be...miliband slash

To be fair (if one must), there's a difference between underage and pre-pubescent, and to my mind "paedo" equals the latter, not the former. And besides, he waits until his brother's 16 birthday before the fucking and pimping takes place. It's a deeply moral work!

If the protagonist is over the age of consent, then in what respect is the story "paedo"?

I retract then Mike: I didn't read very far before realising it was unlikely to make my Friday morning appreciably better. So it's just incest prostitution porn, is it?

Better than that: it's BLACKFACE incest prostitution porn.

Does he credit his sources?

Weirdly, he wrote a Guardian piece in 2002 about incest which kicks off with a conveniently juicy friend-of-a-friend anecdote.

I think the letter's basically okay, but then I am biased (see above). I wish he'd written this letter first, though, rather than those two awful non-apology apologies.

The Wikipedia stuff is just weird.

http://theorwellprize.co.uk/news/the-orwell-prize-and-johann-hari/

On the afternoon of 14 September, a courier returned the plaque which had been awarded to Johann Hari on winning the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2008. There was no note of explanation. The prize money (£2000) has also not been returned. The director of the Prize telephoned the editor of The Independent who confirmed that Hari had returned the Prize, which was also confirmed later by Hari’s ‘A personal apology’, published online by The Independent.

damnnnn

that fuckin' guy

tho tbh i think most people in his position would find it hard to scrounge up £2000 to repay the prize money