Johann Hari apology

[WidowWadman]

Sorry he says. And he gives the Orwell price back and he's gonna take unpaid leave until 2012 and even do some training.

About right or got off lightly? Discuss

Chilling.

Got off lightly. He's even admitted to using a pseudonym so that he could go online and have a go at his detractors. Dishonest, unprofessional and cowardly. He's lucky to still have a job as a journalist. Who's going to believe what he writes, even after he's undergone retraining?

I'm just surprised by the Indy's decision

I think the wikipedia stuff probably was the worst of his offences, but reading how he not only plagiarised, but also placed words into interviewee's mouths I'm not sure how much it can be really put down to lack of training either, can it?

Well his credibility as a journalist is irretrievable. And unless he resigns or is sacked it looks like he could severely damage the Indy.

Although very intelligent and talented, he clearly is not suited to journalism, and by protecting him the Indy have done him no favours. Especially as it looks as if he might well have mental health issues (that David Rose stuff is extemely odd behaviour).

Could the mental health thing might be the reason why they're so lenient - basically trying to protect a vulnerable employee?

Oh and the wikipedia stuff is by no means the most damaging of his alleged offences. There's some rather stomach churning stuff, which the Indy should have dealt with and appears to have ignored.

Widow x-posted .

If he's psychologically unsuitable to be a journalist - the most supportive thing would be to help him into another career, I'd have thought.

What David Rose stuff Jackstarb?

velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2011/09/poison-pen-of-johann-hari.html?m=1

Some of the Hari trolling (mainly as David Rose) is described in this blog. It's also called 'sock-puppeting'

I think I agree with Charlie Beckett (@charliebeckett) who tweeted: "Seems to me that Hari is simply in the wrong job. Should stop pretending to be a journalist & stick with polemical fiction. Seriously."

Which stomach churning stuff which has been ignored do you mean? The porn thing? If that's what you mean, I agree with DAG that it's not really relevant.

The smearing of opponents and bigging himself up using not only a pseudonym, but actually posing as a different existing person is pretty bad.

It's interesting, especially as elsewhere somebody had just been jailed for trolling

Actually - this article by David Allen Green is worth a read. He was one of the first to expose the David Rose / Hari link.

One final link for anyone with an hour to spare.

Who is David Rose?

It's David Allen Green's investigation on his Jack of Kent Blog. The most amazing thing is the 140 comments. It's like reading a crowd sourced who-done-it.

JJ - Yes, maybe a glittering career in fiction beckons for Hari.

Widow - yes I agree with DAG, fiction is fiction, and no crime has been committed. But Hari and the Indy are naive if they think gay, pedophiliac, porn won't be used to discredit him. I suspect if he had been sacked, the story would have quickly disappeared.

I know an actual David Rose. He isn't secretly an Independent journalist, though.

This guy was an untouchable of the new left. Left = virtue. Ergo how bad can he be? He'll bounce back.

He's an idiot. There's no place in journalism for ideological fuckwits like him. Report on the news as it has happened, not as you would have liked it to happen.

I've no doubt that there are plenty of other journalists on the Guardian and Independent that are just as bad, if not worse.

The whole David Rose thing is utterly bonkers. A lie that just got bigger & bigger....

Reminds me of that guy from "the Wire". He got a Pulitzer prize. I've no doubt Hari would have got something similar if he hadn't been exposed.

that's very funny, JLK, when it's the Guardian that's exposed phone hacking - after a dogged three-year investigation in the teeth of opposition from the police, government and the full might of Murdoch's empire.

Hari's been a very, very, very silly boy and should go off and write a book, not try to get back into journalism. But it's not his politics that are the issue here. It's his behaviour and lack of ethics.

Speaking as a journalist, I think it would take me more effort to make up quotes for interviewees (in profile pieces) than just to do the ruddy interview and transcribe my notes/play back the recording.

He should have his ass fired and he should NEVER be allowed to try journalism again. He's on a "retraining" course in the US at the moment. How the hell can you retrain when you were never trained in the first place. Hari didn't spend hours getting his 100wpm shorthand or sitting in living rooms listening the the sad sobbing of families who had lost loved ones, or sitting through hours of planning meetings or visiting shitty homes and listening to mad people tell you that "council won't fix my......"
He left university and followed his own political agenda.....then tried to make himself the story. Kick his ass to the kerb. Hose him down and leave him out to dry.
I have nothing but contempt for him.

Oh and he should give the bloody prize money back.

Which NCTJ course did you attend radiohelen?

I went to Harlow. There should be a special prize for people who went to Harlow. Mind you, 'off-diary' days were probably no picnic for the locals.

Hari should be forced to spend a year cycling round and round the roundabouts there. He's a very troubled person who would benefit from a regime of mundane and repetitive activity.

Plagiarism is unforgivable ? unless you call it research. Don't you hate people who start to believe their own legend?

It reads like a pretty unreserved apology to me- he has gone up in my estimation. And I can forgive the sockpuppeting, kinda, just because it's so easy. I bet it's far more widespread than we think.