Someone called Johann Hari, a columnist on the UK Independent and a gadabout for various other up-there publications, has confessed to lifting quotes to beef up his celebrity interviews. If his star subject is not making much sense, Hari will pinch a better quote on the point-in-hand, truffled from the written work of the interviewee (uncredited), and pass it off as part of his own splendid cross-exam. Naughty!
Blogger scorn and fainting have greeted this confession: why, it's even trending on Twitter as I write.
Hari's problem, one of many I fear, may arise from what he thinks an interview is for. He imagines his interviews are 'intellectual portraits'. Oh dear, I wish he'd spoken to Madame Arcati first. A newspaper 'interview' is nothing more than entertainment whether it's in the Sun or Le Monde Diplomatique. The object of the exercise is to bring to vivid life an encounter of usually short duration. The good writer-interviewer, as the ruthless, opportunist carnivore he or she must be, will be alert for signs of weakness in the subject, ie for signs of entertainment material that makes a mockery of the PR or of the book/film/whatever that whorishly accounts for the interview in the first place.
If, say, a star interviewee-author coughs up blood and dies while boring the shit out of us on atheistic conformity in British journalism then there's your money shot. Readers are not interested in ideas or lectures, not even godless ones. Alas, Hari imagines his role to be that of transcriber of great words - or great words obtained by others' efforts if needs be. Reality check: any collection of his interviews will struggle to sell 500 copies (100 of those flogged to friends and relatives), eBook or otherwise.
Has Hari damaged his career? Absolutely not. He has already done the essential thing and made a name for himself. Once you're a name, it is very hard to self-immolate, professionally. What may look like public scorn and contempt now is nothing more than glamour-enhancement without sequins. Readers just love a name, and harmless notoriety goes down well with editor-scrotes desperate for promotional material (eg names).
If I were Hari, I'd go to the Independent editor - while he survives - and ask for a pay rise. A daytime TV show hosted by Johann Hari cannot be far away.
Click here to read his confession.
I suppose that's what happens when a large ego is at play.
ReplyDeleteHow horribly cynical
ReplyDeleteThat's right, poppet, let it steam out. I can't imagine what Johann has done to create such tension.
ReplyDeletei think you are spot on madame A.
ReplyDeleteBut I find Hari pernicious because he is also a 'spokesperson' for 'gay rights' and a particularly sanctimonious one at that. Which has an impact at the level of the content of his turgid articles as well as his 'role' as a celebrity journalist.
And I am more in the Anti-Gay/Metrosexy (to keep it up to date) camp than the boring, narrow, 'gay' rights camp.
Bad journalism is depressing but Hari is not alone in producing that. He does stand out though as a 'preacher' of hugely overblown proportions though.
The day of th e print interview is dead. They are all super-controlled glorified press releases these days
ReplyDeleteWell, I dunno about Anonymous, but here's one thing he's done to me. He begged some quotes from me for a profile piece on someone I'd worked with years before, ran them in a snide tone 180º opposite from mine, credited me ostentatiously whilst the article itself was anonymous, and thus ruined my most prestigious professional contact. When I kvetched about it to mutual friends, they said, "Oh, that's just Johann," as if that mitigated matters rather than aggravating them with pattern-of-behaviour evidence. On subsequent meetings he seemed to imagine we were still friends.
ReplyDeleteBut your Liz Brewer interview was nothing but piffle Madame.
ReplyDeleteThank you Ian. I hadn't thought of the actual damage...
ReplyDeleteIs Elly homophobic or just a poor writer?
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to tell if this piece is serious or not. It reads serious yet smells like a pisstake but I can't tell if your pisstaking Hari, newspapers or interviews. Can't you write more clearly, like Hari?
ReplyDeleteLearn the difference between 'your' and 'you're' and I'll happily lift Hari's lucid prose.
ReplyDeleteI think Ian Shuttleworth hits the nail on the head. Hari is stealing other people's work. Perhaps Hari should credit in footnotes.
ReplyDeleteAll this venom is just jealousy. You're all jealous of Johann's success and desperate to see him sacked so he can be a loser like you lot. You're all sad tossers.
ReplyDeleteHaha. That's not the real Suzanne Moore is it?
ReplyDeleteI love this blog but I get so CONFUSED by all your aliases.
The real S Moore would know what I meant by 'Anti Gay'
But just to clarify Anti Gay is a book from 1996 by Mark Simpson:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Anti-gay-Sexual-politics-Mark-Simpson/dp/0304331449
It criticises 'gay rights' politics and the 'gay identity' from a more radical, inclusive perspective.
Welcome to the masquerade, Elly. If only people could be upfront like what I am.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, peeps. Simon Kelner, editor of the Indy, has tweeted his support for Hari. Am I psychic or just a cyncial, shrewd old cunt? He writes: 'In the 10 years my darling poppet has toiled on the Indy, not one sleb has complained about poppet making up quotes or thieving them, whatever', or words to that effect; I paraphrase.
I admire loyalty. Stand by your man, that's what I say.
Have you got a cock pic of Johann? That'll settle it
ReplyDeleteI think I'm right in saying that Duncan Fallowell is the only British writer of literary standing whose naked body is out there for all to see.
ReplyDeleteIf Johann would like to send me a naked pic for publication he is assured yet a further boost to his celebrity - and possibly a turn on Loose Women.
Duncan's picture is sexy because it's not a pose. The 'incidentally' cock pic is always best
ReplyDeleteBy accident you have widened the plagiarism claim against Hari. On his site he admits to using the written work of interviewees where meaning is clearer than the spoken word. This is like cosmetic dentistry. However, you have broadened his misuse of other people's work, or misprepresentation of his own work, to the lifting of other journalists' interviews - hence Ian Shuttleworth's complaint. Well done, Madame.
ReplyDeleteNo, just to clarify: Johann Hari has not, to the best of my knowledge, plagiarised any of my work. What he did was solicit quotes from me which he then, whilst reproducing in substance, diametrically misrepresented in tone. It wasn't a theft from me: I obliged him, and got blithely, collaterally-damagely stitched up for my pains.
ReplyDeleteWell, Ian is saying something else - that he credited Ian to his detriment.
ReplyDeleteSo Hari is a fraud. Shan't bother in future
ReplyDeleteThe reason Duncan Fallowell's interviews are so good is that you can hear the authentic voice of the subject. Also - there IS a difference between fiction and non-fiction, despite current wishes to smudge.
ReplyDeleteI soooo agree. Hari goes into an interview with a head of expectations and a sense of self-importance (unearned). DF is the timeless Zen Puck determined to fetishise the momentary exchange - his subjects sense this. The result is comedy and enchantment. I'm not unfond of Hari but his interviews would bore a Paris Review ed.
ReplyDeleteIn today's Indie he protests, "I did not and never have taken words from another context and twisted them to mean something different" - maybe not, but with me he took words from the immediate context and twisted them to mean something not just different but opposite. And "When I've been wrong in the past [...] I have admitted it publicly, tried to think through how I got it wrong, and corrected myself." In the words of Diana Ross, I'm still waiting...
ReplyDeleteThank you Ian. I could do worse than ask Mr Hari...
ReplyDeleteI seem to have done rather well out of this debate - so far
ReplyDeleteDuncan Fallowell