Orwell Would Be Turning In His Grave
Hari Should Be Stripped of His Prize
Guido has just got off the phone with the Media Standards Trust, a charity “that fosters high standards in news on behalf of the public”. As sponsors of the Orwell Prize they funded the award to Johann Hari of the prestigous prize in 2008. Orwell is the giant of British political writing, the inventor of the Ministry of Truth and creator of Winston Smith who had the job of “rectifying” the past. Johann Hari has done far too much “rectifying” of quotes and facts to have the honour of holding a prize named after Orwell.
The Media Standards Trust tell Guido that procedure has to be followed, that the governance process for the Orwell Prize council involves worthies and due process has to be seen to be done. It is farcical for a charity that aims to foster the highest standards of political journalism, in the name and tradition of Orwell, to have as a recipient of their highest award a journalist who fakes interviews. George Orwell once wrote “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Johann has been caught deceiving, it is time for them to act…
UPDATE: Guido just spoke on the phone with Hari (like a real journalist, not one who just pretends to interview the sources of his quotes) to ask him “Will you be giving back the Orwell Prize?”. He hesitated for a moment before saying “I have an article in the Independent tomorrow… thank you.” He then put the phone down…
Doubleplus good
Be honest, did you really expect anything else? Keep paying the tax suckers!
Misread title as Orville will be spinning in his grave. That Keith Harris has a lot to answer for!
Do not concern yourself. He could not give a duck about it.
I hate that duck
Hairy Johan is caught stealing
game on +8
It’s got Penny Red bouncing off the walls as well. Tee-hee!
They cannot f’ucking stand criticism, can they?
Fantastic. Couldn’t have happened to a more sanctimonious, manipulative comrade.
Bye bye Hari!
Of course it could , that hypocritical old fraud polly, for a start. Writing what you must know to be complete and utter bollocks, with a view to your fellow travellers at the bbc diseminating it as fact to the general public, is just as bad. Hang on, the bbc diseminating complete and utter lefty bollocks to the general public , with the intention to deceive, now were getting warmer !!!
I note Ms Red has invoked the Laws defence on behalf of the fabricator:
“I like to be part of a baying, gleeful hate-mob as much as any other twat, but the #interviewswithhari tag is getting homophobic. Not cool.”
When has she been part of a baying, gleeful hate-mob?
I thought she was the next Mother Theresa?
Even Mother Theresa was no ‘Mother Theresa’ – she was responsible for quite a few deaths in her time.
“Give sick people medicine? Heck, no, God wants them to die!”
Only in a religion that sick would an ex-Nazi be in charge, surrounded by paed0philes, bestowing sainthoods on callous killers.
what is homophobic about the tag?
“Interviewswithhari” ?????
I see homophobia everywhere……
I think she means the twitter comments ? sent to that address, Billy.
I don’t know how it works, tbh.
Anything that suggests that an idea could run contrary to their thinking can be branded with whatever handy “phobia” comes at first to mind. Don’t worry, they actually all hate each other too.
Thanks Tax payer
Come and join the BBC, Hari
Your standards are our standards
Someone used a Pet Shop Boys lyric in #interviewswithhari – uber-intelligent Penny sensed a homophobic element creeping in and immediately ran to the barricades.
I don’t know where the poor, underprivileged and downtrodden would be without her.
Penny Red! Eddy Balls! Guardianistas! Michael Foot! Millibland!
Can you hear me? Millibland! Your boy just took a hell of a beating! Your boy just took a hell of a beating!
“#Interviewswithhari” is really funny !
I could see Robert Di Niro was impatient “You talkin’ to me? ” he said.
/applause
The Hari Downfall…
Maybe he will publish a “correction ” in his next artilce
at least he can spell
He’d be writing for “The Guardian” otherwise….
Leave Billy alone you sanctimonious wanker
He can certainly lie.
He would be suited to be a future Labour Mp, Is Ed Miliband still looking for a new spad?
The ends justify the means comrade. Any “deceit” would have been for the greater good of the people. You see that, don’t you comrade?
I like your thinking, Josef….Do you work for the BBC by any chance ??
urgent orwell prize doubleplus ungood recipient rectify hari doublequick
Read this and decide how fitting the Orwell prize is;
http://fleetstreetblues.blogspot.com/2011/06/independent-columnist-johann-hari.html
The problem with Hari’s technique is that people say different things according to the context in which they are speaking or writing.
Winston Smith would be proud of this justification for the distortion of reality.
So we’re going to get a self-obsessed, whiney article tomorrow pathetically trying to justify what he’s done?
And it’ll finish up saying “oh actually, I was right all along”.
Don’t worry, it is going to be in the Indy. No one will bother to read it or even see it.
Perhaps he might change his name, maybe Eric Blair or something like that.
Mmm…that’s a bit too subtle for some of our readers , LL.
But not all…
Eric was the exceptional good one – before we were presented with Tony and Ian.
What about Lional?
Better than the last two. At least people voted with their pockets for him, and for Eric in their millions. I first read Animal Farm and 1984 exactly 50 years ago.
Trouble is I think he would sadly find much poverty and deprivation to write about to-day if he was researching…”Down and Out in Paris and London” or even “The Road to Wigan Pier”..parts of the United Kingdom have not really changed very much in the 70 odd years since he wrote them….a sad indictment on ALL political parties in this country
Tell me about it. The parking in wigan is dreadful, and they haven’t got a harvey nicks. And theres nowhere for your kid to park his beemer when you live in a terraced house.
It’s a contractual obligation
The last thing she needs is a good luck message from him!
Oh lord, perhaps we can get DLT to say a shout out to her to save her from McDoom?
Aung San Suu Kyi
STOP TALKING TO MCDOOM & YOUR LIFE WILL IMPROVE BEYOND YOUR DREAMS.
Amazing how McStalin did nothing to stop his comrades in the Burmese junta incarcerating her after he deposed Blair in an undemocratic takeover.
No words can describe my contempt for McMentals beard.
If Gordon talks to her then she will be doomed………Hasnt he caused enough damage?
Sarah Beard actually claims actress Michelle Yeoh is in good company…with Jonah McDoom! Best laugh I’ve had all day.
I’d like to see Gordon in the same room as Michelle Yeoh. Provided that Ms Yeoh has a full arsenal of martial arts weaponry at her disposal.
“but denied visa so far”
So the Junta has some sense then? Keeping McDoom away from their country is a reasonable position to take – just ask the English.
Exactly,
if I was in charge of a country, ‘any country’ I wouldn’t let the fuckwitt in either.
The generals can’t be all bad.
W.W.
That doesn’t imply that Aung San Suu Kyi is actually on the other end of the phone, ye ken. I caught Gordon chatting away like a merry little magpie last night. “Who are ye talking to, Gordie?” asked I, and the naughty wee laddie said “Ssh! Mr Napoleon disnae like to be interrupted!”
I have heard that a failed British politician by the name of Brown wants to visit me. I have asked the authorities to refuse him a visa.
He falsely places himself in the scene where the quotations actually took place, but he doesnt actually misquote does he?
That does make him a bullshitting tool, but that isnt “rectifying quotes” is it?
Context.
He has been deceptive in the extreme, over & over again.
If that does not worry you, that a journalist could engage in malpractice over many, many years, then I would have to assume you are a socialist.
Right . so s you have me as some sort of wierd straw man in your mind, one who views “bullshitting tools” as being fine journalists.
You don’t answer either point because you imagine that I am a socialist?
A very strange debating tactic.
sockpuppet #4 slowly removes his undergarments and fixes me with a frankly terrifying stare.
He says – slowly and very deliberately, enunciating each syllable with a deathly, sibilant breathlessness – “You don’t answer either point because you imagine that I am a socialist?”
Licking his dry. cracked lips, he starts stroking his rapidly-engorging member. Without even looking up at me, he gently murmurs “A very strange debating tactic.”
Now fearing for my safety, I turn and flee the room.
Do you now see the importance of context? I certainly didn’t mis-quote you, but other than those quotes, none of what I wrote there actually happened. Presumably you’re happy with that also?
Excellent point, well made.
Hari’s tactics are dodgier than he acknowledges.
F*** me I’ll have to turn that web cam off.
I see your point, but you’re actually not doing it very well. (oooh-er)
You aren’t misrepresenting anything I’ve said – which would be better done with quote mining or quote chopping. Or shoving different conversations together innapropriately.
Its actually not a question of what makes me happy, its whether the stuff he’s been caught doing today is sensibly described as “rectifying quotes”.
+1
Thank you AndyN, you have made my point in a very disturbing yet succinct manner.
It’s doesn’t worry me in the slightest, I have always regarded him as one of the biggest tossers on the planet, and wouldn’t dream of reading a single word he said.
Never mind taking it seriously.
W.W.
I am a tweet
Drop the two Es, replace with an A and you’re onto a winner, sunshine.
He’s dropped more than 2 E’s, if his mental health is anything to go by.
Industrial strength Mogadon by the bucketful, more like.
Well twitter off then!
Hari should do the decent thing & hand it back voluntarily.
Then he can make a career out of contrition as well as recycling.
Are the Media Standards Trust one of those lefty-leaning pseudo-intellectual fake charities upholding the causes of Common Purpose and the memory of Marx whilst dressing up as an apolitical body?
I only ask because I’ve never heard of them.
The Media Standards Trust is a branch of Oxymorons Inc, also represented in the UK by the Interesting Cricket Society and the Impoverished Bankers Benevolent Fund.
Let him spend some time in my cellar ! That’ll learn him !
If only all journalists had my integrity!
Today I will be holding an emergency cabinet meeting with my ministers Mr Magoo, Iggle Piggle, La-La, Zippy, He-Man, Shaun the Sheep, and Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men.
Just re-read The Road to Wigan Pier recently (must be the 10th time at least).
He was never really a fully convined socialist. In fact in TRTWP he expends a lot of words bashing the ‘Guardianista’ stereotype for all he’s worth.
Orwell (Blair) was a toff through and through who was decent enough to care a little for those less fortunate than himself and to report on how these people lived.
I heve read almost everything he wrote at some point or other. My conclusion is that he was essentially a middle-of-the-road conservative, even though the left claim him as an icon.
Where is *our* Orwell for the 21st century?
He was an old tory patrician, with an attitude to the ‘lower classes’ that we would now call patronising.
The left claim him as one of theirs because they have so little real talent.
Yes he was an almighty snob.
It comes across in almost all his writing.
His barely-concealed loathing of the lower-middle-class salesman character in ‘Coming Up For Air’ for example. All those horrid little people who live in nasty little red-roofed suburbia and have to but their own furniture.
OH THIS FUCKING KEYBOARD!!!!!
OTB – as posted, your message gives an amusing image of angry suburbanites imitating rampant goats charging around front rooms running into sideboards – and not being able to afford to employ a butler to do it for them…
Precisely the image I was conjuring dear boy.
Do they mean me, Hilda?
Yeah, cos everyone know’s there were loads of middle-of-the-road conservatives fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish civil war.
Orwell hated statists of all types, be they Marxists, fascists, or Tories:
“The real divsion is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians’.
Yes I’ve read Homage to Catalonia too.
As the fighting went on in Barcelona May Days “He spent much of the time on a roof, with a stack of novels”.
I don’t think the ‘left v right’ thing is a particularly helpful distinction, and neither did Orwell.
There is as much that unites social democrats and (small L) liberals as there is that unites fascists and authoritarian communists.
Socialism is as broad a church as ‘conservativism’. What could Durruti and Lenin be said to have in common for instance?
They’re both bloody foreigners for a start.
The left-wing, right-wing thing, is a British fiction, started to try and drive a wedge between different Matterialist/Marxist socialist totalitarian groups.
Worked fine for a while.
Opposing fascism isn’t a left-right thing? Conservatives (or tories) dislike it as mch as anyone else, I guess.
He was a classic tory. It was the guilt and shame of his privileged, neglected youth that caused him to think as he did.
He was certainly wary of statism after Spain.Homage to Catalonia is one of my favorite books and I would recommend to anyone who has not read it.
Orwell seems to have been “against” rather than “for” and his poltics are not easy to categorise.
I suspect trying to claim that Orwell was a middle of road conservative is on a par with Mr Hari’s intellectual honesty. He was quite happy to lump Tories and toy town revolutinaries together in the same useless category.
He was a patrician tory. A HYPOCRITICAL patrician tory, with some old fashioned attitudes.
I looked up TRTWP up as I didn’t immediately recognise the reference.
Turns out it’s
‘The Return To Work Programme.’
Marvellous irony Sir.
Infidels! Are you paying too much for your car insurance?! Then call Akbar Insurance for top deals! Special discount for fellow muslims! A surcharge of 854% for decadent evil kafir western infidels! Death to the West! And please increase my benefits. Thank you, western dog.
Ah by here at Sharia’s Wheels we do a 50% discount for Saudi women drivers.
Beat that Abdul!
I’m afraid my car’s completely blown up this time.
Past winners of the Orwell Prize include the screamingly irritating bores Melanie Philips, Polly Toynbee and Yasmin Alibi Brown. The judging panel just thought they’d reach out to a plagiarist for a change.
Sounds a bit like one of those ‘Buggins turn’ jobs.
can’t we get all of those wimmin and bores in one room and…… (insert suitable word) like fill the room with cement and run away?
The prize is a joke. The 1996 winner in the journalism category was Melanie Phillips.
It is difficult to imagine the depth of contempt Orwell would have had for her.
And Hari!
I actually have a soft spot for mad Mel, anyone who can get lefties frothing at the mouth is always good value.
Anti semitism is not very nice Cato, & so 1930′s.
I think you may have chosen the wrong kind of response there Sophie. You’ll be saying next Mr Fawkes is having a go at Hari because he’s gay.
when have lefties ever let the truth and facts get in the way of a good tale?
Can I have an award?
How about the…
Sour, ugly, miserly, misanthropic, chippy, paranoid, mental Scottish Git of the Decade Award?
The competition is stiff, mind.
Whoa! Hold on there a minute big man!
See me! I’m still in the running for that, aye!
Chief Twat
Thorntons and Habitat last week
Carpetright and TJ Hughes this week
Here’s a scoop for you Tory economic ar*seholes
WH Smiths and BHS gone within a year, Boots and M&S also to shut stores in 2011/12
Mary Portas “Queen of the Shutdown”. Now go back to this silly Guido story, while 10s of thousands, mainly young retail workers head to the dole office.
so, do you want to bail out failing buisnesses?
I wondered who shopped in those tacky “Pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap” shops. It must be your carer Moussa.
Enjoying being in opposition?
Lovin it !!!!!!. Coz your mob has one term written all over it.
Enjoying power ( sorry coalition )
Now go back to Daves member
Except Boots is hugely profitable. Only a lefty Hunt can’t see the difference between a healthy business and an ailing one.
A bit of wishful thinking there. You utter shiites trying to talk the country and its businesses down. How very Blue Labour!!!
Thorntons hasn’t gone bust. They are closing quite a few stores, and hope to franchise them out. Their commercial division (selling to supermarkets, etc.) is doing well; they are expanding this part of the business.
I don’t buy my chocolate from Thorntons. It’s too expensive and I don’t like the taste.
That’s how a market works, I guess.
I don’t buy my chocolates from Thorntons because I don’t want to get fat as a barrell and have a heart attack. I think Eric Pickles is very fond of them.
If they made big profits, that would be wrong too. There just ain’t no pleasing some folks.
What about all the old retail workers?, Age-Ist Pig.
Older workers will probably be able to take care of themselves. Labour hate these people. Labour like young, malleable people. People who can be brainwashed into thinking they cannot cope without the State.
Hmmmm…. might internet shopping have something to do with it??
Stand in line in WH Smith for 10 minutes to buy a book for £8 from a stroppy immigrant who insists on offering you their latest chocolate deal vs couple of clicks on your computer to buy same book for £5 and have it delivered to your home.
I kid you not, you are right.
I got a new mobile phone, needed a data cable. One phone shop offered me one for £17. Another said they could order one, it would be “about £12″. They took my details, but never called me.
In the end I got one on eBay. It was 99p including P&P.
I can honestly say I’ve only ever shopped in two of those stores – Boots and M&S. Boots had a sultry shop assistant who fucked me off, so I swore I’d never go back, and M&S now have an Asda-esque pretend radio station playing chavvy rap-music over the intercom – I left and swore never to return.
So, why exactly should I give a rat’s flying fuck that the stores you mentioned are going broke?
Their absence will create opportunities for new, better, stores to take their place.
Trollspotter – I’ve been looking for a ‘sultry shop assistant’ to get to know for a long time. Can you tell me where the shop is?
The trend was already there…the web traders such as Amazon etc or the likes of the supermarkets such as Tesco diversifying into clothes,books and household/electrical goods all undercutting the High Street chains…. the writing was already on the wall for the less well managed retailers who were still stuck in the 1970′s model of doing business. When the economy was booming on consumer borrowing(courtesy of McIdiot and Co )nobody noticed.You could mask the underlying trends and you had to be really useless not to make a profit but when the downtown came that just accelerated the process but when the debts were called in and the recession started consumers were not spending on large ticket items or if they were they were shopping on the web or looking for value causing margins to be slashed to suicidal levels for those struggling retailers
Brown depended on the consumer boom to finance his spending(all on borrowed money)when it went tits up the results are what we’re seeing to-day.
What’s the ’1970s model’ of doing business? Are you talking about shops, in streets, or something like that?
And lets not forget Rover and Cadburys on Labour’s watch – amongst others.
Thousands of skilled workers headed to the Job Centre (do keep up)
Let’s stop playing ‘my dad is better than your dad’ shall we?
Bunging any company money we do not have to buy votes is childish and pointless. Like your comments.
God you must be a massive fucking arsehole if all you can find to do is troll on here.
Errrrrrr. That is correct.
You ain’t seen me, right?
I WOZ FINKIN OF BEAN A JERNULYST BUT IT WOZ ME GRAMA DAT WOZ LEHIN ME DARHN. I SLAPPED HUR IN DE FIZZER THOUGH!
We can’t stand about here doing nothing. People will think we’re journalists.
With suitable apologies to Spike Milligan.
Yeah but journalists would be sitting (or lying) down.
Absolutely shocking!
You’re about 3 years behind Private Eye as usual Guido.
I doubt it. That self-important little twerp, Hislop, has no contacts in Westminster and so in dependent on repeating what he’s read in The Guardian.
What use are contacts in Westminster when they are nearly all liars?
Guido .
How many national newspapers have you had articles published in ( 0 )
How many books have you penned (1/2, other half by your gay mate )
How many awards have you won (0)
How many times have you actually met or interviewed the likes of Hyena Boy, Blair or Brown. (0)
How many times have you appeared on national television (1 – 3 minutes – and that was a disaster )
You Guido are just a bin forager, catching the tail ends of tittle tattle – Jealously is such a nasty emotion.
How many national newspapers have you had articles published in ( 0 )
All of the broadsheets, more proud of having written a leader for The Sun when I was 20.
How many books have you penned (1/2, other half by your gay mate )
2 – watch out for another one coming in a few months.
How many awards have you won (0)
Numerous.
How many times have you actually met or interviewed the likes of Hyena Boy, Blair or Brown. (0)
Met loads of ‘em, don’t do interviews or make ‘em up Hari-style.
How many times have you appeared on national television (1 – 3 minutes – and that was a disaster )
All the time.
Who are you?
LOL…worried are you Guido.
Moutha, pleathe, your anticth are making the Labour movement look foolisth.
Who am I. Don’t you know.
I’m in Qatar seeking asylum. No immunity for me…Dave said so
The pool was very cooling today. Off for evening cocktails. Please don’t tell anyone in Lockerbie
‘Moussa’, will you stop playing on your computer and come downstairs? Your tea’s ready. It’s your favourite: chucky-egg and bready soldiers.
Guido, you are on the BBC less than Polly Toynbee so I wouldn’t brag about how much TV you have done. You’re an amateur, my friend.
Okay, so everyone is on the BBC less than Polly Toynbee – even Marcus Brigstocke racks up fewer Beeb hours than the Guardian’s in-houset gargoyle. That, however, is not the point.
There is only one thing for it, Mr. Fawkes: it’s time to accept that invitation for I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
LEFTY FUCKERS
Teachers
Trade Union Officials
Johann Hari
Whatever happened to:
Bird flu
Acid rain
Swine flu
Jedward
Cool Britannia
The hole in the ozone layer
Johann Hari
UK Uncut?
Whatever happened to:-
Migration in the 10’s of thousands
Inheritance tax cuts
National Service
Broken society pledges
Big Society ( due another re-launch me thinks )
Tough on crime
Anti Euro sentiments ( Dave loves the EU now )
Web Cam
Weekly bin collections
SpAds cull
Woeful Warsi
“Events,dear boy, Events!”
Wishful thinking
Poor Dave and the Cockalition aint dealing too well with any events to date….so you are hoping for a postive event…dream on
National Service, in your case, would be a good idea.
Unfortunately your man Dave didn’t follow through with his much heralded NS plan. So sorry Mongwatch I can’t help you there.
He never offered to introduce National Service. But if you want it, I’m sure the next Labour government will consider re-introducing it, just for you!
You’ll be far too old by then, of course, which is a shame.
Fair comment really. I think the answer in each case may be ‘Clegg’.
They are all songs on Billy Braggs latest CD entitled An Inconvenient Youth, including a bonus track cover version: The Windmills of My Mind.
Hullo is that Aung San Suu Kyi? – I would like to order a takeaway please
Would you like a nan bread with that
Would you like a pizza, Daddy?
Ed Miliband has stolen my name.
This Chinese seclet police restuarant, Suu Kyi takeaway done, No 350 tonight, but Plessclotts weady for collection, no flee delivery on orders over 3 rickshaws.
War is Peace!
Freedom is Slavery!
Fiction is Journalism!
I shall copy and paste an apology tomorrow
the above was copied and pasted from almost all of Andrew Pierce’s articles
Where did Gordon Brown touch you? Show us on the doll.
He touched me on my winkie.
With his tongue.
While we’re on journalistic bullshit, can someone look into Laurie Penny’s highly dubious claims of being thumped by police at the student demos.
The BBC is a steaming lying pile of shyte too.
But they employ me on a regular basis
They may well be but don’t knock ‘em they delivered a “Hung Parliament” for Labour didn’t they ?( even though the Conservatives were up against the most unpopular PM this century useless “Dave” couldn’t manage even a single figure overall majority)……keep telling a big enough lie that a “Balanced Parliament” will be good for the country enough times and eventually the people will believe you…..
‘like a real journalist, not one who just pretends to interview the sources of his quotes’
He didn’t pretend to interview anyone. Keep up old chap.
You just don’t get it Guido. These people are not interested in truth. They are neo-Marxist post-modernists creating a narrative. Their ends justify their lies.
Another corrupt exemplar of the New Labour years is found out.
It will take years to winkle out these corrupt henchmen and placemen from their ill-deserved Establishment sinecures.
One by one, one by one.
“Guido just spoke on the phone with Hari, like a real journalist”
You’re 50% there, but you do know there’s more to being a journalist than being a past it, overweight, gin blossomed nosed booze hound who happens to have internet access?
The amount of what we can charitably call ‘mistakes’ and straight up misinformation you’ve posted doesn’t exactly put you in line for any awards Guido.
But we like it.
The reading public like heat magazine too, what the fuck does that prove?
Washington Post blog sums it up nicely:
“Let’s say you once interviewed Martin Luther King Jr. for a story, but he wasn’t all that articulate about his hopes for racial reconciliation. So you decided to just quote his “I have a dream” line in the story and pretend he told it to you. That’s fine, right?”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/johann-hari-denies-he-plagiarized-during-interviewsbyhari/2011/06/28/AGGk0ApH_blog.html
PM show on the BBC just said Hari was wrong but he was just “too young and too brilliant”.
Media Standards Trust – Trustees
Robert Peston – BBC
Julia Middleton – Common Purpose
Robert Worcester – MORI
Guido, any crosshairs for Hari?
Have a lie in Lyn Brown Labour MP and advocate for living wage wants a slave to run around doing back breaking back flips for her. The lazy piece of shit says she does not have the resources to pay the mug to carry her workload. What a lazy, sponging hypocrite. New Labour? SLAVE LABOUR!
http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0003736.html
Hari’s Game
by Hackwatch
Private Eye
23 March – 3 April 2003
Number 1076; page 5
Johann Hari, The Independent’s new columnist, has been bemoaning the “corrosive acid of distrust” in public life. “We in the press are least trusted of all British institutions,” observes the 24-year-old pundit, who was shortlisted as young journalist of the year in this week’s British Press Awards. “The number of my friends who assume that we just make up stories – even at reputable paper such as The Independent is startling.”
Not that startling, surely, especially if they are regular readers of Johann Hari. He began his career as the voice of yoof in July 2001, just after finishing his university finals, by boasting about his drug habit to the readers of the New Statesman. “Another Cambridge May Week has rolled around,” he wrote, “and I, like half of Cambridge, celebrated with a few tabs of Ecstasy and the odd line of coke.”
Fleet Street editors were thrilled: the Sindie reprinted his piece, and a few months later the London Evening Standard invited him to do an encore. Hari obliged by defending “the Ecstasy I know and love” against the tut-tutting of the Home Secretary. “Clearly, David Blunket needs to be informed of the basic facts about one of Britain’s most popular drugs,” he raved. “If he fancies tying one, I’ll be happy to take him to a decent club. But in the meantime, I’ll try to explain why so many of use the drug weekly.” He duly went on to describe the sensation of being “loved up” and “at one.”
In fact, however, the young rascal had never taken Ecstasy: before writing his lyrical account he had to phone a friend and ask what it felt like! And now, less than two years later, he has already forgotten his brief incarnation as an e-fiend. “Ecstasy defined the generation of my older siblings, not mine,” he wrote in the Indie two weeks ago. “Ecstasy is out.”
No matter: it served its purpose, and Hari was on a roll. A couple of weeks after his original ecstasy article he went to Genoa for the G8 summit and sent a vivid dispatch to the New Statesman about the death of anti-globalisation protester Carlo Giuliani. “On Friday, before the real business of the summit began, the police shot him twice in the head and then ran him over,” he reported. “They killed him, even though he carried no weapon other than a fire extinguisher. When I saw the scene, I couldn’t believe so much blood had poured from just one body.” Yet, as several witnesses can attest, Hari wasn’t there, having hailed a taxi to escape the scene some time before Giuliani was killed.
Now that he’s a full-fledged pundit, Hari has been pontificating in the Indie and on Newsnight about his support for a war against Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis want to be bombed, he says, even if more than 100,000 of them die: he knows, because he’s been there and talked to them. “Last October, I spent a month as a journalist seeing the reality of life under Saddam Hussein,” he wrote on 10 January. “Most of the Iraqi people I encountered…. Would hug me and offer coded support.”
Actually, Hari spent two weeks in Iraq as a holidaymaker, on a package tour visiting ancient archaeological sites. He wrote about the trip in the Guardian on 3 December last year. In that article, however, he complained that it was “very difficult to get Iraqis to express their feelings… I blundered about asking fairly direct political questions, which caused people to recoil in horror… Many people asked quite genuinely ‘why your government hates the Arab world’.” He also met many “dignified, stoical Iraqis” and “doe-eyed children” who complained about western sanctions.
The only person who eventually offered “coded support” was an old man in a souk who had visited London in the 1970s. “After much oblique prodding, he said warmly, ‘I admire British democracy and freedom.’ He held my gaze. ’I very much admire them.’ He added, ’We do not know what is coming. The news we receive here is… unclear.’”
And, er, that’s it. Yet in an Indie column on 15 February, Hari claimed that people in Iraq asked him: “When will you come to free us? When will we be able to live again?” Since these pleas from Iraqis yearning for the bombers to arrive must surely have struck him as newsworthy, why didn’t he mention them in his original Guardian feature?
Answer comes there none. The only question troubling this journalistic wunderkind at the moment is why on earth British newspaper readers suspect that hacks “just make up stories.”
A journalist who fakes interviews? A dangerous position to take Guido. A Blogger who fails to credit – what is the difference?
The problem young Johann Hari has is that we expect to much from him, as do his editors.
If he was to play to his strengths and stuck to his areas of expertise, every thing would be fine.
He is a top quality writer. His knowledge of Winter sports first rate.
Latin-American economics. Top bloke.
Cheese !
Not aware of this creature until today, but I am concerned that the “Media Standards Trust” is regarded as a charity.
Relief of the sick, poor, education and defence of the realm, and improving the lot of beasts is all that should be charitable.
Justhtin is it Orwell Thex day ?