The Hari Affair

After months of suspense, now we know the full extent of what Johann Hari is admitting to, and it is very serious indeed. (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-personal-apology-2354679.html) Firstly, there is inserting material silently from the books of people he was interviewing, in place of what they said in the actual interview. This is wrong but not appalling. I am puzzled as to why he didn't simply insert the material from elsewhere and just cite its origin. Then there is the inserting in his published interviews of material from interviews done by other journalists without attribution. In other words, plagiarism. It is distinct from the practice described above, and inexcusable. With or without journalistic training. it is hard to understand how Hari thought this was an acceptable thing to do. The final admission is by far the most serious. It is that he created a fictitious online identity - using a name which happens to be that of a Times journalist working at the moment, David Rose, with whom Hari went to university - with which he maliciously re-edited the wikipedia entires of 'people I had clashed with', as he puts it. This was done secretly, and more than once. It was not an isolated incident, not merely a single moment of anger or foolishness. The allegation that he had done this has been around for some time. At first glance it seemed absurd: what could possess someone to do such a thing ? It is so childish - 'juvenile', as Hari himself writes. The gain is nothing, and the potential loss of reputation if discovered so immense. There are people online with the skills and patience to unmask anyone doing it, despite any attempt at concealment. A key point of the whole affair, and Hari admits something along these lines in his apology, is that if a right-wing journalist or commentator had done what Hari has done, he would have attacked them strongly for it, and with relish. The Independent are backing Hari and he continues to be employed by them. The question for me is: whatever article he writes next, how will anyone take it seriously ? Will it not be greeted with derision ? Finally, Hari refers in his apology to 'the most basic ethical rule: don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you.' That seems to me so tortuous a way of putting it that the meaning almost disappears. Here's a simpler way: 'Do as you would be done by.' ADDENDUM: On reflection, I find Hari's apology even less satisfactory than I did at first, and am surprised that The Independent printed it as it is, or thought it was sufficient. The only motive for silently inserting quotes from books by his interviewees in his finished pieces is to make his interviews seem better than they were. The reason Hari gives is a transparently inadequate rationalisation. His defence that because he lacks proper journalistic training, he didn't realise plagiarism was wrong is absurd. If you notice, the apology constantly seeks to minimise the offences by being deliberately vague about details. With each of the three misdemeanours, it is important to know the extent of it in order to judge its seriousness. In each case, how many times did he do it exactly, and over what period ? For instance, with the wiki-trolling: who precisely were the targets ? How many times did he interfere with their pages ? What alterations did he make ? Over what period of time did he do it ? Accurate answers to those questions are vital for the reader to determine his or her opinion of what took place. All in all, Hari is trying to apologise without really doing so, and for some reason The Independent has allowed him to do it. Regarding either Hari or the paper, it won't do. (By far the best reaction to all this I have seen is by Bagehot for The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/09/unethical-journalism )