Johann Hari has been in a lot of hot water on Twitter over the past 24 hours, after it emerged that he has been taking pre-existing interviews and passing them off as his own. This has led to the #interviewsbyhari meme becoming popular on Twitter. From Toby Young:

 

A storm of controversy is brewing on Twitter and elsewhere about the professional conduct of Johann Hari, the Left-wing Independent columnist and winner of the Orwell Prize for journalism. (Hat tip Fleet Street Blues.) For some time now, Hari has been under fire for his cut-and-paste technique – that is, passing off things that his subjects have said elsewhere as things they’ve said to him during his interviews.

 

A typical example was his 2009 interview in the Independent with Malalai Joya, billed as “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” (hat tip Brian Whelan). Here’s an extract from the interview:

 

I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. “I am never frightened when I tell the truth.” She is speaking fast now: “I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me.”

 

But did she actually say this to Hari? The words Hari quoted are identical to those in a press release for her book, Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out:

 

I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who have condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me.

 

There are numerous other examples, the most controversial being Hari’s 2004 interview with Toni Negri, the Italian Communist. As the DSG blog points out, many of the quotes in that interview, which Hari presents as things Negri said to him when he sat down with him at the ICA, were lifted from a 2003 book called Negri on Negri in which he was interviewed by Anne Dufourmentelle.

 

Now, it would be dishonest not to point out that many British journalists are guilty of this practice. In America, if a journalist lifts a quote from elsewhere, the custom is to provide a source, i.e. “as Negri said in Negri on Negri …”, but in Britain there’s no hard and fast rule. What’s curious about this case is that, in general, the lower down the professional totem pole, the more likely a journalist is to indulge in these cut-and-paste shortcuts. For someone of Hari’s stature to be found guilty of it – a winner of the Orwell Prize, no less – is unusual.

 

Esther Addley, senior news writer at the Guardian, condemns Johann Hari on Twitter

 

But more importantly, Hari isn’t simply accused of lifting quotes from elsewhere and not referencing a source. That’s misleading, but not straightforwardly dishonest. What Hari is doing is actively claiming that the interviewee said those specific quotes to him, Johann Hari. Take this passage from his interview with Negri:

 

Negri recently described the Soviet Union as “a society criss-crossed with extremely strong instances of creativity and freedom”, which is more than he has ever said for any democracy. He even says that the Soviet Union fell because it was too successful. I point this out, and he replies: “Now you are talking about memory. Who controls memory? Faced with the weight of memory, one must be unreasonable! Reason amounts to eternal Cartesianism. The most beautiful thing is to think ‘against’, to think ‘new’. Memory prevents revolt, rejection, invention, revolution.”

 

Compare this to what Negri said to Dufourmentelle:

 

Who controls memory? Faced with the weight of memory, one must be unreasonable! Reason amounts to eternal Cartesianism.

 

It’s the use of a phrase like “I point this out, and he replies” that marks Hari out as a special case. That appears to stray beyond the merely misleading.

 

The reason this has all come to a head is that Hari replied to some of the criticisms in a post on his blog yesterday entitled “interview etiquette”. He readily admits to engaging in routine cutting-and-pasting, but says this isn’t the same as straightforward “plagiarism” and that he only does it in the interests of clarity:

 

When I’ve interviewed a writer, it’s quite common that they will express an idea or sentiment to me that they have expressed before in their writing – and, almost always, they’ve said it more clearly in writing than in speech. (I know I write much more clearly than I speak – whenever I read a transcript of what I’ve said, or it always seems less clear and more clotted. I think we’ve all had that sensation in one form or another).

 

So occasionally, at the point in the interview where the subject has expressed an idea, I’ve quoted the idea as they expressed it in writing, rather than how they expressed it in speech.

 

That strikes me as pretty feeble. After all, if his overwhelming concern is clarity and accuracy, shouldn’t he be clear about the fact that the interviewee hasn’t given that quotation to him?

 

It will be interesting to see how Hari’s editor, Simon Kelner, reacts to this. I would expect a “clarification” to be published in the Independent at the very least. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the repercussions for Hari’s career are more serious.

 

Do you think that what he has done is dishonest? As you probably already know, I'm no great fan of Hari, but I do know that many of you think quite highly of him. I imagine that there will be some fallout from this, possibly even cost him his job at the Independent, although I imagine if that happens, the Guardian will pick him up 6 months down the line when the heat dies down.

Edited June 28, 201114 yr by Brett-Butler

I think this has been blown out of all proportion really. By and large he's done it where he's doing pieces devoted to painting a portrait of a particular person - and where someone's made a point where they've expressed it more clearly in writing or more clearly elsewhere beforehand I don't really see what the issue is with using that rather than an unclear script. Sure, it might have been better had he explicitly pointed out that this was what he'd done each time, but I think it's a complete storm in a teacup.

Apparently there's a piece by him on tomorrow's Independent so I'll see what he has to say.

 

If he is doing what Young admits to doing himself - using a clearer written statement rather than a more rambling spoken answer - I don't see that he's done anything too terrible although I would prefer a journalist to make it clear that they have done that.

 

As one of those who has generally had a high opinion of Hari, I'd love to see him at the Guardian - unless he is guilty of a greater degree of dishonesty than I think is the case at the moment.

Apparently there's a piece by him on tomorrow's Independent so I'll see what he has to say.

 

Johann Hari: My journalism is at the centre of a storm. This is what I have learned

 

Yesterday on Twitter I was accused of plagiarism. This accusation is totally false – but I have reflected seriously on this and do have something to apologise for.

 

When you interview a writer – especially but not only when English isn't their first language – they will sometimes make a point that sounds clear when you hear it, but turns out to be incomprehensible or confusing on the page. In those instances, I have sometimes substituted a passage they have written or said more clearly elsewhere on the same subject for what they said to me, so the reader understands their point as clearly as possible. The quotes are always accurate representations of their words, inserted into the interview at the point where they made substantively the same argument using similar but less clear language. I did not and never have taken words from another context and twisted them to mean something different – I only ever substituted clearer expressions of the same sentiment, so the reader knew what the subject thinks in the most comprehensible possible words.

 

I stress: I have only ever done this where the interviewee was making the same or similar point to me in the interview that they had already made more clearly in print. Where I described their body language, for example, I was describing their body language as they made the same point that I was quoting – I was simply using the clearer words from their writing so the reader understood the point best. This is one reason why none of my interviewees have, to my knowledge, ever said they were misquoted in my nearly 10 years with The Independent, even when they feel I've been very critical of them in other ways. My critics have focused on my interview with Gideon Levy as supposedly distorted. So what does Gideon Levy say? These are his words: "I stand behind everything that was published in the interview. It was a totally accurate representation of my thoughts and words."

 

This does not fit any definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is presenting somebody else's intellectual work as your own – whereas I have always accurately attributed the ideas of (say) Gideon Levy to Gideon Levy. Nor can it be regarded as churnalism. Churnalism is a journalist taking a press release and mindlessly recycling it. It is not a journalist carefully reading over all a writer's books and quoting it to best reflect how they think.

 

Over the years I have interviewed some people who have messages we desperately need to hear – from Gideon Levy about Israel, to Malalai Joya about Afghanistan, to Gerry Adams about how to end a sectarian war. Just this week, I interviewed one of the bravest people I have ever met – Shirin Ebadi. I would hate people to not hear these vital messages because they incorrectly think the subjects have been falsely quoted. Every word I have quoted has been said by my interviewee, and accurately represents their view. I hope people continue to hear their words.

 

When I've been wrong in the past – as I shamefully was over the Iraq War – I have admitted it publicly, tried to think through how I got it wrong, and corrected myself. So I've thought carefully about whether I have been wrong here. It's clearly not plagiarism or churnalism – but was it an error in another way? Yes. I now see it was wrong, and I wouldn't do it again.

 

Why? Because an interview is not just an essayistic representation of what a person thinks; it is a report on an encounter between the interviewer and the interviewee. If (for example) a person doesn't speak very good English, or is simply unclear, it may be better to quote their slightly broken or garbled English than to quote their more precise written work, and let that speak for itself. It depends on whether you prefer the intellectual accuracy of describing their ideas in their most considered words, or the reportorial accuracy of describing their ideas in the words they used on that particular afternoon. Since my interviews are long intellectual profiles, not ones where I'm trying to ferret out a scoop or exclusive, I have, in the past, prioritised the former. That was, on reflection, a mistake, because it wasn't clear to the reader.

 

I'm sorry, and I'm grateful to the people who pointed out this error of judgement. I will make sure I learn from it.

Thanks for that Mark.

 

There was a short discussion about this in the paper review on BBC News last night. The biggest criticism there was his description of the body language of the subject accompanied by what we now know was not a direct quote of what they said. They also made the point that none of his subjects had ever complained that they were mis-represented. If in the future he either quotes the subject directly or makes it clear that he us using a quote from elsewhere to make the same point, I don't think there's any real problem.

 

Are they maybe having a go at him and attempting to discredit him because he's maybe getting under the skin of certain people.....?

According to reports, Johann Hari has been suspended for two months from the Independent “pending investigation” by Andreas Whittam-Smith. Whether this relates to the alleged plagiarism, or for other reasons has not been established.

:(

From the BBC:

 

Independent writer Johann Hari has been suspended by the paper after becoming embroiled in a row over quotes used in his interviews.

 

The columnist and interviewer was suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation, the paper's editor confirmed on Tuesday.

 

Chris Blackhurst said an investigation would report back in two months' time.

 

Mr Hari has previously apologised for committing what he described as an "error of judgement".

 

 

Now that the Independent has announced Johann Hari has been suspended, I trust that the scope of the forthcoming inquiry into press malpractice will include Hari’s professional misconduct. Earlier today, Ed Miliband criticised Jeremy Hunt for wanting to limit the more serious of the two public inquiries the Government has proposed to phone-hacking at the News of the World and urged him to widen its scope to examine malpractices at other papers. Quite right, Mr Miliband. The judge-led inquiry should look into Johann Hari’s conduct at the Independent as well as Tom Baldwin’s at the Times. It would be quite improper to limit the scope of the public inquiry to right-of-centre papers and journalists.

 

Toby Young needs a fucking punch. Yes, it may be academically quite dodgy, but using uncited prior quotes to clarify positions is hardly morally equivalent with phone hacking :manson:

Toby Young needs a fucking punch. Yes, it may be academically quite dodgy, but using uncited prior quotes to clarify positions is hardly morally equivalent with phone hacking :manson:

 

Misquoting is not the extent of the allegations against Johann Hari though, if that was the reason that they were suspending him they wouldn't have let him publish two articles following his apology. There have been other allegations against Hari recently involving dishonest editing of the Wikipedia pages of people he has had a grudge with, which I believe has also contributed to his suspension. Whilst these things are wrong, I still wouldn't say it's as bad as hacking the phones of murdered schoolgirls.

Misquoting is not the extent of the allegations against Johann Hari though, if that was the reason that they were suspending him they wouldn't have let him publish two articles following his apology. There have been other allegations against Hari recently involving dishonest editing of the Wikipedia pages of people he has had a grudge with, which I believe has also contributed to his suspension. Whilst these things are wrong, I still wouldn't say it's as bad as hacking the phones of murdered schoolgirls.

Indeed not. However, it allows the Independent to take the moral high ground when reporting and commenting on News International.

Misquoting is not the extent of the allegations against Johann Hari though, if that was the reason that they were suspending him they wouldn't have let him publish two articles following his apology. There have been other allegations against Hari recently involving dishonest editing of the Wikipedia pages of people he has had a grudge with, which I believe has also contributed to his suspension. Whilst these things are wrong, I still wouldn't say it's as bad as hacking the phones of murdered schoolgirls.

 

...Or paying off Coppers/giving ex-Coppers jobs at News International for "services rendered"..... <_<