Johann Hari
Johann Hari
Born	(1979-01-21) 21 January 1979 (age 33) Glasgow, Scotland
Nationality	British
Alma mater	King's College, Cambridge
Occupation	Writer
Religion	None (atheist)

Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British former journalist who was a columnist at The Independent and The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications, before, in 2011, admitting to plagiarism. He was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize. He admitted making Wikipedia edits under a pseudonym to attack people he had disputes with, and said he would undergo training in journalism ethics. In 2012 he announced he would not return to The Independent and that he was writing a book.^[1]

Early life[link]

Hari was born in Glasgow and raised in London. He attended John Lyon School, (an independent school affiliated to Harrow School) and then Woodhouse College, a state sixth-form.^[2] He graduated from King's College, Cambridge, in 2001 with a double first in Social and Political Sciences.

Career[link]

In 2000 he was joint winner of The Times Student News Journalist of the Year award for his work on the Cambridge student newspaper Varsity. After university he joined the New Statesman, where he worked between 2001 and 2003, and then wrote two columns a week for The Independent. At the 2003 Press Gazette Awards, he won Young Journalist of the Year.^[3]

A play by Hari, Going Down in History, was performed at the Garage Theatre in Edinburgh, and his book God Save the Queen? was published by Icon Books in 2002.^[3]

Personal views[link]

Hari has declared his sympathy with the environmental movement,^[4] republicanism,^[5] and drug legalisation^[6]. He is gay^[7] and a self-declared secularist and atheist.^[8]

Hari supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq,^[9] based on a visit to Iraq in December 2002^[10] and a March 2003 story by Kenneth Joseph.^[11] In 2006 he reversed this position.^[12]

Journalistic controversy[link]

In June 2011 Hari was accused of plagiarism in his use of unattributed quotations in interviews, where he had used previously published quotes in place of his interviewees' recorded answers. The Orwell Prize, which he had won in 2008, was withdrawn following a comparison between one of the articles for which he won the award and the original Der Spiegel article on which it was based. He was shown to have made misleading edits on Wikipedia under a pseudonym. Hari apologised for his actions, although that apology was publicly criticised.^[13][14][15]

Plagiarism[link]

Problems with Hari's journalism were first publicized by the magazine Private Eye in 2003.^[16] In 2011 bloggers DSG (Deterritorial Support Group) and Brian Whelan (editor of Yahoo! Ireland) highlighted his plagiarism by comparing Hari's interviews with previous interviews by other journalists and previous written works by his interview subjects. The story was taken up by The Guardian,^[17] The Telegraph,^[18] and The Washington Post.^[19]

Initially Hari said on his blog^[20] that he had taken material previously written by interviewees and presented it as part of the interview, but said that this was not plagiarism as he was not passing off someone else's thoughts as his own. Later, both on his blog^[21] and in The Independent,^[22] Hari said his use of unattributed quotes was only a clarification. Reviewing this defence, The Guardian's media law consultant focused on copyright issues.^[23] The newspaper's former editor, Peter Preston, wrote that Hari had been foolish, but not dishonest as his attackers alleged.^[24] Simon Kelner, then editor-in-chief of The Independent, said on 28 June that the newspaper had not previously received any complaints about Johann Hari.^[25] In July 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent for two months^[26] "pending investigation" by Andreas Whittam Smith.^[27]

Brian Whelan compared Hari's 2010 interview with Gideon Levy^[28] against Levy's previous writing.^[29]

Guy Walters in the New Statesman compared Hari's 2006 interview with Hugo Chávez^[30] with earlier interviews with Chavez by other journalists.^[31][32]

Other interviews with Malalai Joya,^[33] with Ann Leslie,^[34] with George Michael,^[35] and with Gareth Thomas^[36] were also shown to have used misattributed quotations copied from earlier works^[37] and other interviews.^[38][39][40]

Orwell Prize withdrawal[link]

In June 2011, the Media Standards Trust announced that they recognised the potential of allegations of plagiarism to damage the reputation of the Orwell Prize,^[41] which Hari had been awarded in 2008 (as the youngest-ever recipient^[42]), and instructed the Council of the Orwell Prize to take action^[43] to examine the allegations. A month later the spokesman for the Council of the Orwell Prize announced that it had "arrived at a clear and unanimous decision" as to whether Hari would be allowed to retain the prize he had been awarded in 2008. Public announcement was delayed after the Independent had "requested that the council consider further representations by Johann Hari before announcing the decision",^[44] which could not be made while the Independent inquiry was ongoing.

In July 2011, both Private Eye and Damian Thompson in his Telegraph blog accused Hari of inventing an atrocity for his Orwell Prize winning article on the Central African Republic. Thompson said that this "horrified the charity so much that it complained to Simon Kelner, the editor of the Independent. Nothing happened".^[45][46][47]

In September 2011, Johann Hari announced that, though he stood by the articles which won the Orwell Prize in 2008, he would be returning it as an act of contrition for the errors he had made elsewhere.^[48] The return of the plaque by courier was confirmed by the Council of the Orwell Prize.^[49] Later the Council confirmed that the Orwell Prize would have been withdrawn had Hari not returned it, because after reviewing one particular article, 'How multiculturalism is betraying women', "The Council concluded that the article contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else’s story (specifically, a report in Der Spiegel). The Council ruled that the substantial use of unattributed and unacknowledged material did not meet the standards expected of Orwell Prize-winning journalism." The council also disclosed that Hari had not returned the prize money he received of 2000 pounds.^[50]

Wikipedia editing[link]

In July 2011 New Statesman legal correspondent David Allen Green wrote on his personal blog that in January 2005 a Wikipedia user had discovered that a Wikipedia editor, David Rose, using the sockpuppet account 'David r from meth productions' shared an IP address with The Independent newspaper.^[51] On the same day Nick Cohen in The Spectator^[52] wrote that he had been attacked on Wikipedia by David Rose following a dispute with Johann Hari, as had Telegraph columnist Cristina Odone,^[53] and Oliver Kamm, the Times leader writer.^[54] Cohen also wrote that Hari's own Wikipedia entry had been edited by Rose "to make him seem one of the essential writers of our times".^[52]

In September 2011 "David Rose" was shown to be Johann Hari.^[55]

Apology[link]

The Independent reported in September 2011 that "Johann Hari, the writer and columnist for The Independent, has admitted plagiarism allegations and will attend a journalism training course before being allowed to rejoin the newspaper" but that the results of the investigation by Whittam Smith are not to be made public.^[56] The editor of The Independent, Chris Blackhurst, said that some aspects of Hari's journalism had fallen short of the publication's ethical standards, and that Hari had "acknowledged his mistakes and made a full apology."^[56]

Hari published an apology and admission of misconduct,^[48] and admitted to using a pseudonym to add positive material to the Wikipedia article about himself and negative material to Wikipedia articles about people he had had disputes with.^[48] Hari said he would take unpaid personal leave of absence until 2012 and seek training in journalistic ethics at his own expense.

According to Blackhurst, speaking as a witness during the Leveson inquiry on 10 January 2012, Hari had "severely damaged" the paper, but announced that he would return to The Independent during February as a columnist.^[57] This development was soon reversed. On his blog,^[58] Hari stated on 20 January 2012 that, following his stay in the U.S., he had decided not to return to his job at The Independent, because he was going to write a book which would require international travel. He wrote: "I'm not willing to see other people, who are [sic] played no part in those errors ... take the flack [sic] too".^[59]

Criticism of apology[link]

After Hari's apology was published, Cristina Odone, blogging for The Telegraph, said that neither she nor the other victims had received any direct apology from The Independent or from Hari himself for his malicious editing of their Wikipedia articles.^[60]

The published apology attracted a strongly worded critique from journalist Toby Young, who also criticized The Independent for failing to sack Hari.^[61] Tom Chivers, also in The Daily Telegraph, called the apology "evasive",^[13] while Richard Seymour wrote in The Guardian that the apology was "self-serving" and that Hari had acknowledged "none of the serious charges made against him..." .^[14] David Allen Green in the New Statesman wrote: "the terms of the apology do not really approximate to what was actually done. Something very wrong happened, over a significant amount of time, involving a systemic exercise of malice and dishonesty".^[15]

Awards[link]

• Newspaper Journalist of the Year at Amnesty International Awards 2010^[62]
• Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism 2010^[63]
• Journalist of the Year at the Stonewall Awards, 2009^[64]
• Cultural Commentator of the Year at the Comment Awards, 2009^[65]
• Author of Story of the Year at the Environmental Press Awards 2008^[66]
• The Orwell Prize for political journalism, 2008^[67] (withdrawn 2011)
• Amnesty International Newspaper Journalist of the Year in 2007^[67]
• 'Young Journalist of the Year' at the British Press Awards in 2003^[44]
• 'Student News Journalist of the Year' by The Times in 2000^[68]

See also[link]

• Journalism scandals

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Johann Hari

• Official website
• Articles about Johann Hari in the Guardian
• Articles for the Independent
• Profile of Hari from Commentary magazine
• Works by or about Johann Hari in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Richard William Littlejohn (born 1954)^[1] is an English author, broadcaster, journalist and satirist. He currently writes a twice-weekly column for the Daily Mail.

Littlejohn was previously a columnist for The Sun and has also written for The Spectator and London's Evening Standard. Littlejohn earned a place in the inaugural Press Gazette Newspaper Hall of Fame^[2] as one of the most influential journalists of the past 40 years.^[3]

Primarily a newspaper journalist, Littlejohn has also presented numerous radio and TV shows and has authored or co-authored several books. Although many of his newspaper columns are devoted to life and society in England, Littlejohn lives for much of the year in the United States.^[4][5]

Early life[link]

Littlejohn was born in Ilford, Essex (now Greater London) in 1954,^[1] and his family moved to Peterborough when he was five.^[6] His father worked as a policeman and then for British Rail.^[1] Littlejohn passed the eleven-plus, obtaining the highest marks in his year.^[1] He was offered a public school scholarship which he turned down because the school didn't play football, and subsequently attended Deacons Grammar School.^[7][8]

Journalism[link]

At 16, Littlejohn went to work as a trainee journalist in Peterborough. He worked for local newspapers during the early 1970s.^[6] In the mid-1970s, he joined the Birmingham Evening Mail as an industrial correspondent.^[7][9]

He worked at the London newspaper the Evening Standard from 1979 to 1989, initially as industrial editor, later a feature writer, then in 1988 as a columnist.^[6] While industrial editor in the early 1980s he was asked to stand as a Labour Party candidate, which he declined.^[10] In 1989 he joined The Sun as a columnist,^[11] which attracted controversy, and he was voted "Irritant of the Year" at the 1992 What The Papers Say Awards.^[6]

In March 1993 he gave his support to the 'Save the New Statesman fund' to raise cash to contest libel suits served on the magazine by the then Prime Minister John Major and caterer Claire Latimer.^[12]

In 1994, he left The Sun to write for the Daily Mail,^[11] contributing columns on news and current affairs (in a similar format to his Sun column), and one on sport. His Mail columns earned him the title "Columnist of the Year" at the 1997 British Press Awards.^[6]

In February 1998, Littlejohn became the UK's best-paid columnist when he returned to The Sun to write a twice-weekly column as part of a £1 million deal, which also included presenting for BSkyB.^[13]

In May 2005, the Mail announced that he was re-joining the paper in a move that Mail editor Paul Dacre described as "returning to his spiritual home".^[14][15] The Sun sought an injunction to prevent Littlejohn writing for the Mail before his existing contract with them ended in February 2006, but the matter was later settled out of court and Littlejohn began writing for the Mail in December 2005.^[11]

In addition to regular columns, Littlejohn has contributed articles to The Spectator^[1] and Punch.^[9]

One of Littlejohn's Sun columns - a 2004 skit, entitled "Rum, Sodomy and the Lifejacket", in which Lord Nelson is confronted with political correctness, compensation culture and the nanny state - has been published in newspapers, magazines, and websites with Littlejohn's writing credit removed.^[16]

Radio[link]

By the end of the 1980s, Littlejohn was known in London for his Evening Standard columns, and was invited to radio programmes as a pundit. From 1991, he worked for the London radio station LBC, beginning with a regular opinion spot. LBC later gave Littlejohn his own early afternoon show, Littlejohn's Long Lunch; the programme was a talk show featuring topical discussion, phone-ins, and guests. He later became permanent presenter of the morning show, replacing Michael Parkinson.^[9]

During his time at LBC, Littlejohn was censured by the Radio Authority for breaching broadcasting rules. This culminated in the Radio Authority stating that he "had broken half-a-dozen rules and had incited violence"^[17] due to an edition of his phone-in show in which he suggested the police should have used flamethrowers against a group of "militant homosexuals" protesting outside the House of Commons.^[17]

On another LBC phone-in he was censured by the Radio Authority for describing the British Royal Family as a "bunch of tax-evading adulterers".^[18] Unlike most other Conservative commentators, Littlejohn favours abolition of the monarchy.^[19]

Television[link]

After leaving LBC in 1994, Littlejohn was approached by BSkyB managing director (and former Sun editor) Kelvin MacKenzie, and was offered the chance to present a nightly current affairs show on the TV channel Sky News. Called Richard Littlejohn, the show ran for one year. It was not a success. Littlejohn expressed his disappointment, claiming that broadcasting regulations would not permit him to present the show in the style of Rush Limbaugh's programmes: "If Sky News could emulate its U.S. sister Fox News... ratings would soon shoot past the Astra satellite. But the regulators won't allow it."^[17][20] Later in 1994, Trevor Phillips of London Weekend Television hired Littlejohn to host a studio-based talk show entitled Richard Littlejohn Live And Uncut.^[21] Phillips produced three series of the programme, which was transmitted only in the London area.

On Littlejohn's 8 July 1994 show, he was critical of two lesbians, one of whom was Linda Bellos. Michael Winner, a guest on the show, attacked Littlejohn for his views and told him that the lesbians "have come across with considerable dignity and you have come across as an arsehole."^[22]

Littlejohn hosted the first series of Channel 4's game show Wanted, a stand-in for Bob Mills).^[23] Wanted aired in October 1996 and won a Silver Rose at the Festival Rose d'Or.^[24] As part of a 1997 deal which saw him return to the Sun, Littlejohn hosted a night talk show on Sky One called Littlejohn: Live And Unleashed.^[25]

In early 2003 he returned to Sky News to present Littlejohn, a live talk show initially broadcast twice weekly but later extended to four nights per week. The programme was axed on 8 July 2004 when Sky News changed format and replaced it with regular rolling news.^[26]

On 9 July 2007, Channel 4 showed a documentary entitled The War on Britain's Jews?, written and narrated by Littlejohn.^[27] Littlejohn has also appeared on the BBC's Question Time^[28] and Have I Got News For You.^[29]

Books[link]

Littlejohn has authored or co-authored:

• The Essex Girl Joke Book (as Ray Leigh, with Mitchell Symons as Brent Wood, 1991, Corgi Publishing) - a collection of Essex girl jokes, co-written (with "Brent Wood") under the pseudonym "Ray Leigh".

• You Couldn't Make It Up (1995, Heinemann, ISBN 0-434-00238-0) - named after one of Littlejohn's catchphrases, and described on the jacket as "a brilliant collection of liberal-skewering wit and wisdom", this is a book of recollections and opinion pieces on subjects such as political correctness, politicians, corporate "fat cats", the European Union, and the British Royal Family. Anthony Daniels, writing in The Daily Telegraph, said: "...not only does he never mention foreigners in any but a derogatory way - when he is far too intelligent a man really to believe that we have nothing to learn from any of them - but when he writes of the Germans and the Japanese as having taken our cars and electronics industries he is pandering to the kind of stupid, ignorant, sentimental, self-pitying xenophobia which is the root of all fascism, and which is an obstacle to genuine self improvement."^[1] The New Statesman wrote: "Not exactly New Statesman territory, but the pick of the best tabloid columnist in Britain is a joy from beginning to end. Hysterically funny, wonderfully politically incorrect, [...] the only writer in Britain to rival the best of the Americans."^[30]

• To Hell In A Handcart (2001, HarperCollins, ISBN 0-00-710613-0) - named after another of his catchphrases, this is Littlejohn's first and only novel, based loosely on the Tony Martin case. The book was lambasted by critics for its portrayal of asylum seekers and the stereotypical individuals in the book, notably by The Independent's David Aaronovitch who described it as "a 400-page recruiting pamphlet for the British National Party".^[31] However, it received positive reviews from some conservative writers such as Frederick Forsyth and Andrew Roberts. This was later the subject of a BBC Radio Five Live discussion with Will Self (see below).

• The Book Of Useless Information (with Keith Waterhouse, 2002, John Blake Publishing, ISBN 1-903402-79-4) - co-written with Keith Waterhouse, this "stocking filler" book is a collection of "useless" facts, described on the cover as "all you never needed to know and didn't need to ask."

• The Ultimate Book Of Useless Information (with Keith Waterhouse, 2004, John Blake Publishing, ISBN 1-84454-060-X) - another volume of "useless" facts.

• Littlejohn's Britain - Publisher: Hutchinson (3 May 2007) ISBN 0-09-179568-0 - described by the Observer as "Lampooning New Labour with polemic, pastiche, parody, satire and savage social commentary." The New Statesman said of it: "Littlejohn's Britain doesn't exist. Literally. He spends much of the year writing from a gated mansion in Florida, and admitted in a recent column that, when he is in Britain, he rarely leaves the house. He is describing a country he sees only through the pages of the right-wing press and his self-reinforcing mailbag."^[4]

• Littlejohn's House of Fun: Thirteen Years of (Labour) Madness - Publisher: Hutchinson (1 April 2010) ISBN 978-0-09-193168-1 - Reviewing for The Daily Telegraph Roger Lewis said: "If you prize free expression, this book is essential reading. I was unable to find fault with a single sentiment."^[32]

Controversy and criticism[link]

The Will Self incident[link]

On a June 2001 edition of Nicky Campbell's show on BBC Radio Five Live, a discussion took place between Littlejohn and Will Self. Both were on the show to promote their novels (Littlejohn's To Hell in a Handcart and Self's How the Dead Live). Campbell cited David Aaronovitch's description of Littlejohn's novel as a "400-page recruiting pamphlet for the British National Party".^[31] Littlejohn responded (referring to Aaronovitch): "What else do you expect from an overgrown student union leader who used to be a member of the Communist Party? I think it is a badge of honour to be attacked by people like David Aaronovitch to be perfectly honest. I might put it on the cover".^[33]

Self agreed with Aaronovitch's comments, said that he had read half of Littlejohn's book, and he described its author as "a kind of Tom Sharpe for the far right". Littlejohn said that he should "read the book in its totality", to which Self retorted "Why?... Does it turn into Tolstoy at page 205?". Littlejohn's response was: "No it doesn't turn into Tolstoy. I don't set out to be Tolstoy. It is a much more complex book than that".^[33] In the same interview, Littlejohn enquired of Self, who is a recovering addict: "You are not still on heroin are you?".^[33]

Asian hopscotch lessons[link]

In February 2011 Littlejohn wrote in his Daily Mail column that Haringey Council was using taxpayer funds for hopscotch lessons for Asian women.^[34] This was an urban myth first propagated by the former Conservative Party chairman, Brian Mawhinney in 1995, and the Hopscotch Asian Women's Centre offered "support services for Asian women and their families on a wide range of issues including domestic violence, benefits, housing, education, immigration and health matters [and provided] advocacy and support to people with learning disabilities."^[35][36][37]

Asylum seeker's benefit claims[link]

In 2004, Johann Hari appeared as a guest on Littlejohn's Sky News programme and challenged his claims that an asylum seeker could claim £117 per week, stating that the true figure was £37.77.^[38] "You propagate anti-asylum seeker lies, just as surely as this man" [Nick Griffin], said Hari, referring to Griffin's support for Littlejohn. He later wrote: "I asked Richard how much a single asylum seeker is given in benefits each week. You'd think that a journalist who writes about asylum twice a week would, of course, know something so incredibly basic. His response was clear. He snapped: 'I have no idea'."^[39]

Attitude toward homosexuality[link]

The Diary column of The Guardian newspaper annually documents the results of a "Littlejohn audit" ^[40] — a count of the number of references Littlejohn makes to homosexuality in his columns.

In the past year's Sun columns, Richard has referred 42 times to gays, 16 times to lesbians, 15 to homosexuals, eight to bisexuals, twice to 'homophobia' and six to being 'homophobic' (note his scornful inverted commas), five times to cottaging, four to 'gay sex in public toilets', three to poofs, twice to lesbianism, and once each to buggery, dykery, and poovery. This amounts to 104 references in 90-odd columns — an impressive increase on his 2003 total of 82 mentions. There is, alas, no space for us to revisit the scientific study which found obsessive homophobes more responsive to gay porn. But Richard, we're begging you: talk to someone.

—Marina Hyde, The Guardian ^[40]

Littlejohn has said he is opposed to discrimination against homosexuals. In his Daily Mail column on 10 October 2007, he said, in reference to British society in the 1970s: "Though homosexuality wasn't exactly my idea of a night out, I thought it outrageous that gays were subjected to discrimination in areas such as employment, housing and pensions."^[41]

Disabled protester[link]

In December 2010, Littlejohn mocked a 20-year-old man with cerebral palsy who was thrown out of his wheelchair by police at a protest. Littlejohn argued that the young man involved should not have attended the protest, and compared him to Andy Pipkin from Little Britain. This prompted 500 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.^[42]

Personal life[link]

Littlejohn is a keen football fan and since the late 1960s has been a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football club. He starred in his own football video, We Woz Robbed.^[43] In 1965, he turned down a scholarship at Oundle School because they did not play football, and he went to grammar school instead.^[1]

He married Wendy A. Bosworth in 1974. They have two children, Georgina (b. 1975), also a journalist, and William (b. 1979).^[1][44]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Daily Mail column
• Richard Littlejohn Tackles Anti-semitism. Interview with Richard Littlejohn at TotallyJewish. 5 July 2007