Johann Hari: the journalist as pariah?

September 29, 2011
Hari

It is hard not to feel just a little bit sorry for Johann Hari. This was not our initial stance: along with just about everyone in the media, we felt that Hari, who admitted charges of plagiarism in his interviews and also used a false identity to modify critics’ Wikipedia profiles, was due the condemnation that came his way. These feelings were only amplified when Hari issued a mea culpa which was, in PR terms, as disastrous as it was self-serving.

The young journalist remains on the Independent’s payroll, but has taken himself off to attend a journalism training course. We would love to be a fly on the wall at said course, for what must Hari’s fellow students make of their notorious peer? Leaving such conjecture aside, when Hari has completed the course, he will apparently not be allowed to conduct interviews, instead being confined solely to his column.

If this scenario – the journalist as pariah, even amid the corridors of his own newspaper – strikes you as rather strange, you will be yet further discombobulated by the suggestion by Chris Blackhurst, the Indy editor, that Hari should not merely return the Orwell Prize for journalism which he won in 2008 (which Hari has already done), but that he should also return the £2,000 prize money he was awarded.

Unless he is the beneficiary of a hitherto undisclosed trust fund, Hari is unlikely to be a wealthy man, for the simple reason that very few people in journalism are. He is funding his (somewhat belated) journalism training himself, and probably does not have £2,000 to burn. In any event, did Blackhurst really need to suggest that the £2,000 be returned? We note that the idea was mooted at the same time as Blackhurst endorsed the poorly conceived notion that journalists should be ‘struck off’ for misdeeds.

Regardless, tension in the workplace is one thing, having an asset-stripping boss is another. Hari’s life, once back at the Indy, is likely to be difficult enough without having to recall that his editor wished him £2,000 poorer.

Pictured courtesy of Flickr user Akuppa: Johann Hari taking notes.

 

3 Responses to “Johann Hari: the journalist as pariah?”

Posted by:
Martin on September 29, 2011 at 9:45 am

Your assertion that Johann Hari is ‘unlikely to be a wealthy man’ is a bizarre assumption to make. Hari is not some newsroom hack, he’s the Independent’s star columnist. He sells papers, and hence advertising space, and is doubtless on the sort of retainer that most of us can only dream of.

As for the Orwell Prize, what sort of gesture is ‘returning’ a prize (i.e., a small plaque) while holding on to the prize money? Answer: a completely meaningless one. What would your reaction be if a Nobel Prize winner, who was found to have falsified his experimental results and was thus stripped of his award, returned the ceremonial medal but held on to the ten million Kronor?

Moreover, the Orwell Prize organisers have concluded that Hari did indeed use unattributed material in one of his prize-winning articles – something he specifically denied in his so-called apology. He’s been busted; now is the time to show some contrition.

Posted by:
Pa on September 29, 2011 at 1:43 pm

This has to be a spoof article. The arguments that Hari should not return his prize are absurd, but what clinches it is that it is illustrated by THE photo of Hari which was the subject of a long dispute in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Johann_Hari/Archive_3#Request_for_Comment:_Disputed_Photo This is the photo about which “David Rose” had an email conversation with Johann Hari in which Hari told “Rose” that he did not own the clothes that he was wearing in the photo. No real supporter of Hari would ever use that photo.

Posted by:
Johann Hari: the journalist as pariah (Part II) | Professional Services PR Firm on October 3, 2011 at 9:17 am

[...] Interesting comments have appeared following our gentle, perhaps ironic, perhaps not, remarks about poor Johann Hari, once the Independent’s star columnist, now apparently ostracised – and definitely not on the Christmas card list of those posting comments here. [...]

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If you’re Joey Barton, attack is not the best form of defence

May 17, 2012

Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.

If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

Gunning foglessly for clarity

May 15, 2012

A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Spin at the Leveson Inquiry

May 9, 2012
Leveson witch hunt

The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.