Johann Hari admits copying and pasting interview quotes

[killer b]

edit2: for those just reading the quote, the suggestion is that David Rose is Hari.

seems fairly obvious from the article tbf.

fucking marvelous. what a total buffoon.

 

[OneStrike]

Haha at the gay incest link, you couldn't make it up (someone else would have to).

 

[butchersapron]

seems fairly obvious from the article tbf.

fucking marvelous. what a total buffoon.

People are lazy though, they'll just read the quote. There is more to come on all sorts of hari-related stuff i'm told...

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Rose must be Hari.

 

[killer b]

there's been more movement in the comments since earlier this evening, but nothing conclusive either way...

 

[frogwoman]

Bloody hell.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

there's been more movement in the comments since earlier this evening, but nothing conclusive either way...

I wouldn't be surprised if it's never conclusively proven, but "everyone will know it's true".

 

[butchersapron]

More Hari sock-puppetry? Here's something odd from that one as well

Niko does seem a bit obsessed with defending Hari. If you google ‘Niko’ ‘Johann Hari’ there are hundreds of results. Usually there follows a mention that Hari went to the Congo last year so he can’t be criticised.

OK, probably there's some substance to the allegations against him. And I don't always agree with him. But kick him around? A guy who, apart from many other scandals he's reported on over the years, has been out to the Congo reporting on the war fought over that material they put in mobile 'phones, which everyone else wants to try and forget about?

What have you, any of you, done with your lives to put against that?

(Not saying it's you meltingpot, i just found it funny)

 

[frogwoman]

it's not meltingpot. But yeh, hari does obviously have previous for this sort of thing Is it me or has the wikipedia thing been known about for quite some time?

 

[killer b]

Yeah, there's been plenty in private eye about his many online personalities.

 

[frogwoman]

i've just looked on the talk page of that sourcewatch article about hari - dave r claims to be a real person and gives the name of some blogger at lenins' tomb that will identify him. does anyone know if it was ever checked up one way or the other?

 

[Combustible]

How does this journalistic calculus work then? Does one Congo article get you a plagiarism pass for life or is there an exchange rate. One worthy report allows you to make up 5 interviews.

 

[butchersapron]

i've just looked on the talk page of that sourcewatch article about hari - dave r claims to be a real person and gives the name of some blogger at lenins' tomb that will identify him. does anyone know if it was ever checked up one way or the other?

Yep, you really need to read all the comments here to follow see how it's panning out...

 

[killer b]

entertainingly, is the answer to that one.

 

[killer b]

i'd be interested to find out what scurrilous info Archie Valparaiso and Bobby posted...

 

[butchersapron]

Very entertainingly! And if the latest is to be believed there's still more in the pipeline...

edit: yep, me too, hope they can back it up later, whatever it was

 

[frogwoman]

Bloody hell reading the comments now , the plot thickens

 

[frogwoman]

Very entertainingly! And if the latest is to be believed there's still more in the pipeline...

edit: yep, me too, hope they can back it up later, whatever it was

I feel a bit sorry for that Times guy

 

[killer b]

fuck him. he works for the times.

 

[frogwoman]

Curiouser and curiouser. The blogpost Archie Valparaiso links to suggests that if David Rose isn’t a real person then Hari’s a stranger guy than I thought. That post appeared 6 June 2005 and confirms that a guy called Dave was helping him run his website while doing a PhD but had to stop for lack of time. David r doesn’t start editing Wikipedia until 19 Oct 2006 whereupon he appears to have a great deal of time, much of which he devotes to upholding Hari’s reputation.

Prior to David r appearing on Wikipedia there were several apparent sockpuppets making changes, particularly with regards to the public school Hari went to. At first, they remove all mention of this, then they try to show that the school wasn’t actually that posh, and then they edit the page of the school itself (John Lyon School) to point out that Hari says it was “appalling” (on a radio show at 10pm which they all listened to). David r picks up the baton on this, and many other issues, when the sockpuppets fade away in 2007.

This all came over a year after Hari mentions his friend and webmaster Dave. However, a man called David was defending his hero on Sourcewatch in January 2005 and was already being accused of being Hari’s sockpuppet. If he WAS a sockpuppet, he was an elaborately constructed one who Hari used as an excuse to block comments on his blog in June 2005 (which he implies were getting abusive). He then used the character a year later on the Daily Ablution blog (link in the JoK post) to add some totally unnecessary details, like having been at Selwyn college, that made it more likely that he would be found out.

For me, it’s the level of details - Methuselah productions, Selwyn college, the lawyer girlfriend, being the webmaster etc. - that makes me lean towards believing this guy exists. If not, Hari is both fiendishly clever and incredibly stupid. It is almost easier to believe that he has an obsessively devoted friend who writes gay incest porn, contacts him on a regular basis regarding Wikipedia edits, did a PhD in geography and subbed at the Independent than to believe that someone could construct this fantasy. Either way, it's very weird and there’s only one man - or possibly two - who knows for sure.

omfg ...

 

[frogwoman]

fuck him. he works for the times.

I did say "a bit"

 

[fogbat]

The AWL (mentioned in the comments on that JoK piece) have got an event in Archway this weekend.

Have texted a mate who's there to see whether they've heard of David Rose.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

http://johannhari.com/2002/01/09/forbidden-love

This article is clearly partly fictional - the bit where his "friend" Rob comes to him and his flatmate is a little bit of creative writing, even if we didn't know he makes things up it would surely be obvious.

 

[PlaidDragon]

Hari's still a better writer than a hell of a lot of other journalists out there.

 

[TruXta]

Hari's still a better writer than a hell of a lot of other journalists out there.

And that tells us what exactly? That he's not completely submerged beneath a tsunami of lies, half-truths and misrepresentations?

 

[ericjarvis]

Hari's still a better writer than a hell of a lot of other journalists out there.

Then he should do the honourable thing and label what he does as "fiction" and not pretend it's journalism.

 

[PlaidDragon]

And that tells us what exactly? That he's not completely submerged beneath a tsunami of lies, half-truths and misrepresentations?

Let's be honest, there's probably a fucking tidal wave of scandal in journalism, and in journalist's private lives. People are out for Hari's blood because he doesn't give a fuck who he offends, and he writes things that people don't want to read. Yeah, he made a major fuck-up over the Iraq war, but IMO he's made up for that a hundred times over in the ensuing years. Who give a toss if he or one of his friends edits Richard Littlejohn's Wiki page, he's a cunt anyway.

 

[ViolentPanda]

And that tells us what exactly? That he's not completely submerged beneath a tsunami of lies, half-truths and misrepresentations?

It tells us he may have a future as a novelist.

 

[PlaidDragon]

Then he should do the honourable thing and label what he does as "fiction" and not pretend it's journalism.

I hardly think what he does is fiction. People are massively overreacting to what is essentially a bit of a stupid thing to do. Hardly earth shattering deception is it?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

He went to the Congo, you know.