I supported Johann, and I am so sad right now. It's the sockpuppeting that affects me more. I think I can forgive him for the quotes problem, as although it makes Johann a lousy journalist, he's a great writer, and I hope he can learn from these mistakes.

But it's the wikipedia stuff that shows a nasty, rather than lazy, side to his character. This is why I didn't want to believe the sock allegations. I hoped the wiki editing was done by some groupie of his.

Went through all the talk history and edits of David R on wiki trying to find some proof or clue that it WASN'T Johann Hari, but what I read really unsettled me. It wasn't all the pro Hari editing that made me suspicious; it was the way David interacted with Felix and others, there was so much artifice there, it was too unnatural, to the point of being cringeworthy. It read so much like a classic sockpuppeteer trying too hard to persuade he wasn't one. Too many "I emailed Johann"s...as in "Look I had to email Johann, so obviously we're not the same person." And I also noticed (but the blog wouldn't print this) that David told Felix he was leaving for a trip to California...and shortly after Johann filed his report on his National Review cruise that left from California. Was he somewhat hoping to be caught out or did he get off on the triumph of giving little clues away and still getting away with it?

I don't know. In truth, even after reading all that, I still hoped it wasn't him. I vacillated between being 100% convinced David was Johann because of the cringeworthy artifice that is so classic of a sockpuppeteer (I have known too many in online fandoms: http://www.journalfen.net/users/charlottelennox/784.html ) and being 100% convinced it couldn't be him because Lenin's Tomb said they were different people.

And now it looks like Johann set them up somehow to create his alibi. Did he get a boyfriend or a close friend to lie about their name? Did he PAY someone?

It's the deceit, the sheer immaturity of an internet sock puppeteer, the vindictiveness, just...the whole cringeworthyness of his sock arguments on wikipedia that made me desperate not to believe it was Johann. Compared to it, the quote embellishment seems nothing. Someone else wrote an article weeks ago saying they knew Johann had a vindictive and spiteful side, so they could easily believe he was David R. From reading all his articles, I never saw that side. I have never read another columnist whose opinions I almost all agreed with. I thought it was impossible that someone who argued for employing reason against hypocrisy and extremism.

Now I guess I have learned a lesson: even people whose opinions you deeply admire can turn out to be hypocritical gits. I don't know what else to say, just that I feel I am in mourning for someone I admired and yet who seems never really to have existed.

I think it's a good thing he's returning the prize, even though rather an empty gesture as they've already demanded he do so. I think his apology completely misses the point. Not only does it gloss over the wiki stuff (which to me is the worst) but he's treating it as if it's a token punishment. Rather than the fact that his bad journalism made all his entries to the prize suspect so that even if they are accurate, it doesn't matter. I'll wait till the rumoured new Johann-in-Africa dossier comes out, but I did support him on this issue, as it seems to me the anonymous translator has a personal grudge against him and might just be hopping on the bandwagon. But because of all his other mistakes, we'll never know if it's true or false, and that's why he has to lose the prize. I am still not convinced he understands this from his apology.

@Flashbuck

See this link where i explain that i just don't want to write further about it: http://bit.ly/oItvh5

You will see that I use rather condemning language, but you have to read the post word for word.

(Yes, the link is correct, it just needs to be read.)

happy to help.

@Flashbuck

:-)

No doubt DAG will let Johann Hari have both barrels in a decade or so. When I knew DAG - I guess he was about 21 - he was a passionate Tory who went out leafleting for the Oxford University Conservative Association, and was hacking his way up the Bow Group. I dare say it's only a matter of time before he changes team again!

Has anyone ever met a homosexual who is not just a wee bit disturbed by his predicament.

Does anyone who re-read's this plagiarist's piece on the National Review cruise still believe the quotes from the passengers are real? Please! Look up another world class plagiarist, Stephen Glass. Both are cut from the same cloth.

John is absolutely right. He's finished and the end will probably be ugly and cruel despite pitiful exortations to "move on" like the above.

Its been very depressing and disllusioning to see journalists you used to respect like DAG show a complete lack of judgment and moral clarity stemming from elitist tribal loyalty to a very nasty and dishonest hypocrite.

What a lovely irony: the press statement from the Orwell Prize is a wonderfully Orwellian piece of newspeak, 'The 2008 Orwell Prize for Journalism, which had been awarded to Johann Hari, was returned this afternoon by courier. The Orwell Prize accepts Hari’s withdrawal.'

On the face of it, it's a perfectly true desciption of the facts, and yet on the other hand it patently isn't...

Presumably, the prize committee must have been through his submissions with a fine tooth comb fact-checking the veracity of his quotes, and yet they say nothing about those pieces integrity in their statement. This strikes me as a curious ommission. Failure to address the legitimacy of the Hari's reporting makes them look very foolish indeed.

Hari says in his apology that he stands by the pieces. Indeed, he claims that untruths were fabricated by his enemies as a means of discrediting his work.

Specifically, and it's worth quoting in full:

'In 2007, I travelled through the Central African Republic to report on the fact the French government had been bombing the country. An anonymous claim was made that I had exaggerated the extent of the French bombing, and that I had fabricated a quote from a French soldier on the ground. Two representatives of the NGO that I travelled with came forward to The Independent’s investigation into my journalism and they said my description of the bombing damage was entirely accurate, and that they have photographs of it. They also explained that they witnessed me speaking to several French soldiers when the person making these charges was otherwise occupied.'

Back in July, Damian Thompson wrote a piece on that trip which in the light of yesterday's apology makes for some interesting reading. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100098789/johann-hari-i...

Hari's account differs markedly from the account reported by the NGO worker whom Thompson interviewed and from whose emails he quotes extensively.

Who knows whose account is truthful? The NGO worker or the now disgraced journalist? And for that matter were the two witnesses that Hari mentions actually the interns that he is alleged to have befriended? Perhaps we should be told?

Like you, David, I find myself in transit.

Surely Bow Group positions were appointed, not elected? So you just weren't much of a greaser. That, at least, is something to be proud of.

And again!

'Like the dead, "David Rose" could not sue me.'

'So I wrote a post, who is David Rose?'

And what did the post reveal Flashbuck?

I bet you feel stupid now. And if you don't then you're even more stupid than what you could be feeling.

The problem with this attitude is that Hari now damages any cause to which he attaches himself. No one will ever trust his journalism again. That's a shame but only Hari himself is to blame for that. That he hasn't been fired does huge damage to Independent's reputation. Why should any aspiring young journalist at that paper bother to observe basic standards? http://www.helpwithbaby.com/

>especially against a fellow secularist and liberal, and someone whose writing I still admire

That I think is where I depart from you, David.

I do not see a liberal; I see a bigot willing to use lies to further his campaigns, and who repeatedly invents things which he calls 'facts' in his opinion columns.

I'll say no more out of respect to the NS comment box web-elves.

But I think it may well come back to your circuit if some of the victims of Hari's statements - 'antisemite' comes to mind - are not willing to roll over and accept a statement of regret where he did not even mention their names.

One aspect which I think *should* concern you is Hari's complete non-concern for 'little people' and interviewees he has sensationalised, and into whose mouths he has put words they did not say.

How many of these have received blowback - from security forces or enemies - as a result of Hari's inventions?

"I have no wish to see Hari sacked"
..."especially against a fellow secularist and liberal, and someone whose writing I still admire"

Oh dear. Your sympathy with his politics excuses him from having more than his knuckles rapped?

Just because someone is on our side that doesn't excuse them anything. Would you be as tolerant of someone from the other end of the political spectrum, I wonder?

One thinks of another 'secularist' and 'liberal' Victor Gollancz, when he refused to publish Animal Farm in 1944, writing to Orwell's agent: 'I am highly critical of many aspects of internal and external Soviet policy; but I could not possibly publish a general attack of this nature.'

7m died in the gulag and a further 15m were imprisoned there and yet fellow Socialist Gollancz could not publish a critique of it.

@ Mr Divine

"People are using language in a way to present their opinion as a fact. Sometimes they link their opinion to a supposed site which has the 'facts'."

As there are only three links in the above comments and as I'm responsible for one of them, I feel a comment is justified.

In what way is the Daily Telegraph a 'supposed site' (spare me the obvious amusing answers)?

How do you square the fact that Damian Thompson has a witness who disputes Hari's recollection of the CAR story with the witness vindications of the same CAR story he describes in his apology?

It really is a very cheap rhetorical device to accuse others of presenting opinion as fact and then procede to do exactly the same from the other side of the divide.

Johan Hari's behaviour is beside the point now. The real issue I have is the failure of the Indy and the Orwell Prize Committee to be open and transparent about the deceptions practised on them and the readers of Mr Hari's journalism. By failing to address that problem they have done him a great diservice in the long-term.

Quote:
'Yesterday, Hari provided an apology in respect of a range of journalistic failings, and in this he has admitted to having been "David Rose" all along.

Many will now want to "draw a line" and "move on". This is a commendable reaction....'
What is meant by 'drawing a line'? If it means moving on to employ someone else to comment then I agree.
A seven-year old knows the difference from right and wrong. For adults, looking up the word 'integrity' will provide enough words to replace the above article and demand Hari be given his marching orders and advised to find another career. I for one will boycott anything he writes - he's a disgrace to the profession. I for one will not be reading anything he writes ever again. he has NO integrity and doesn't deserve his job. He belongs with The News of the World etc - finished.

@Jamie
You are confusing being a good writer with being a good journalist.

The journalist course is laughable. He's a skilled writer and journalist already. He does not need to learn how to be one. He already knows it's wrong to lie and plagiarise. He already knows it's wrong to systematically smear people he doesn't like.

Frankly, one wonders what he Indy regards as amounting to gross misconduct.

A very fair and forgiving article.

I just wish I could feel so charitable. Hari lied and defamed a large group of people. He didn't have the courage to tackle them head on but instead like a poison pen writer attacked from behind a wall of anonymity. He knew what he was doing was wrong but didn't seem to care, a bit like a sociopath. If I was one of his victims I'd sue the firey pants off him.

David,

I don't think 'drawing a line' is possible here.

First, who's paying for this journalism course at, according to Guido, Columbia, an Ivy League school in New York.

Is it Hari? Maybe he should pay back what he's earned from made-up copy filed freelance elsewhere first, eh? Or is it the Indy? So, will all their trainees now be getting a Rolls-Royce indoctrination?

Second, what kind of inquiry doesn't talk to many of those who've been wronged, including Cristina Odone, whose experience you quote here (see her blog at the Telly today for more on that)?

Third, what does it say when Hari can breach the fundamental rules of journalism and still be fostered while hundreds (if not thousands) of others are being turfed out of the profession on economic grounds? If your facts don't add up, we can live with it, but if the numbers don't and it's not your fault, get lost? It's not as though The Indy's been immune to cost cutting.

The whole thing is a joke.

"Frankly, one wonders what he Indy regards as amounting to gross misconduct."

Bigging up rioters.

But I'd be curious to know if anyone other than Jody McIntyre has been sacked from the paper for gross misconduct - and if so, on what grounds.

I read Hari regularly and enjoyed his writing, although I disagreed with a fair bit if what he said.

But this...

Sorry but it's just not on.

An apology in the Independent?

and sending him on a journalism course?

Do me a favour!!!

He knows how to write just fine.

It's his morals that needs addressing.

Can you imagine the uproar if a Daily Mail hack had done this?

The guy needs sacking.

I will never take anything he says seriously again, and as for the Independent...

How can it possibly maintain its buttock-clenchingly self-righteous tone when its employing a proven liar and slanderer as a columnist?

Christ!!!

Holding controversial opinions is no reason to fire someone - indeed, if you're a newspaper columnist, it's pretty much an essential job requirement.

As I said in the other thread, the "gay incest porn" element to the Hari saga, while people seem to be leaping on it with prurient glee, should be entirely irrelevant, unless someone can prove that it was written during working hours when he was being paid to write about something else.

We have come across many allegations of bias and distortion concerning Wikipedia entries and Wikipedia in general.
The allegations usually originate from right-wing media or individuals with a similar viewpoint.
We use Wikipedia as a bench-mark when checking 'facts' and have in no case found any error, malign or otherwise.
Of course we did not check out Wikipedia entries for the individuals mentioned above. Whatever the source there are deplorable although they appear to be so obvious as to raise immediate suspicion of infiltration.
Wikipedia is obviously vulnerable to this type of character assassination but we have found it to be impartial, balanced and factual where we have used it Naturally, we consult other internet sources.
According to unimpeachable, published sources, Stephen Spender and George Orwell at some time or other seem to have worked for British Intelligence.
We can find no reference to these links in Wikipedia.
Is it all bloody propaganda as Arthur Seaton claimed?
Don't believe what you read in the papers!

Sub-editors

Writer writes, 'If Hari was an MP or public official, he'd have to resign.'

I think the expenses scandal (not to mention the lying career of Blair) disproves that.