Busted! Johann Hari is guilty of shoddy journalism

You are so busted, Hari

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. Hari is a holier-than-thou, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth, supercilious Lefty, not a tabloid hack.

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.