Phligm Phlagm Johann Hari Special

You may or may not have seen the fuss about journalist Johann Hari’s plagiarism/embellishment/misattribution of quotes/ delete as appropriate.

Here’s an account in a competitor newspaper that explains what Mr Hari has done:

"Busted! Johann Hari is guilty of shoddy journalism"

Hari is a former winner of the Orwell Prize, a very prestigious journalism prize, and some journalists think he should be stripped of the award:

"Orwell Would be Turning in His Grave - Hari Should Be Stripped of His Prize"

All this fuss led to a fun game on Twitter today whereby people tweeted the sort of things that Mr Hari might have included in his ‘interviews’. Celebrity tweeters like Simon Pegg have joined in the fun (“After discussing my evidence with him. he stroked his thick beard, looked up, and then loudly exclaimed 'GORDON'S ALIVE'? #interviewsbyhari” and “I questioned his commitment in providing honest answers... "I am serious" he replied to me... "And don't call me Shirley" #interviewsbyhari”). You can see more here: #interviewsbyhari

Now the more innocent Brits amongst us may like to think that our newspaper journalists have higher standards than most countries’. Not so, says the somewhat shocked Washington Post:

Washington Post

 

I have a different take on this. The #interviewsbyhari thing might be funny, but minor plagiarism is a minor crime compared to other things Hari has done. Basically, he’s the kind of journalist that distorts the truth* to pander to the prejudices of his readers and / or advance his own career. And he’s been doing this seemingly since he left Cambridge as a self-confessed pill-popping student:

Private Eye, 2003

Matthew Sinclair: Economics 101 - Johann Hari's Convenient Lie

So did any fellow journalist come out in support of Hari today? Yes – Polly Toynbee. Which is rather like Robert Mugabe saying that Colonel Gaddafi is greatly misunderstood…

 

 

* Actually, that’s generous. It might be more accurate to say that he just tells lies.