Johann Hari - it's not plagiarism, but it's not okay

In a way, it's unfortunate that Johann Hari is the person at the centre of this whole debacle. Not because I like him, though I've expressed admiration for him before, but because he is a high-profile journalist whose opinions tend to be fairly divisive among right and left, conservative and liberal, whatever. So even though the controversy that exploded today raises some legitimate issues about journalistic integrity, much of the discussion consisted of the usual suspects on the right calling for Hari's head (or job, or Orwell Prize) or on the left defending him in a way you know they wouldn't if he weren't on their side.

At any rate, a summary, in case you're not in the UK or haven't used the internet today: On June 17, DSG posted a piece noting glaring similarities between an interview Hari did with Italian communist Antonio Negri in 2004 and a previously published book called Negri on Negri by Anne Dufourmentelle. After reading the post, blogger Brian Whelan yesterday posted his own analysis of Hari's interview with Gideon Levy, and found that, again, large sections of quotes purportedly given during the interview were actually excerpts from Levy's previous writings or lifted from earlier interviews. Hari responded with this, admitting to the practice and defending it in the name of clarity and coherence.

Two of the accusations that have resulted are that Hari is guilty of plagiarism and churnalism. He's correct in saying that he did neither of these things. Plagiarising is passing off someone else's words or work as your own. Hari is using words that have already been said or written by the person he's interviewing, and attributing those words to that person - but not in the right context. And churnalism is the term given to copy where journalists have basically just reproduced a press release - clearly not the case here.

But what Hari is guilty of is journalistic and intellectual dishonesty. He is leading readers to believe that an interviewee said something to him that they did not. His portraits are always intensely personal, and the way the dialogue is laid out suggests that an equally intense conversation took place between the journalist and his subject. The question isn't whether Hari misrepresented the interviewee's ideas (and he and his editor Simon Kelner insist that he hasn't), it's whether he misrepresented the whole interview to his readers. Hari has taken sometimes very poignant and intelligent thoughts and deliberately created the impression that they were said directly to him; he even goes as far as to describe the interviewee's tone or body language while delivering the quote.

Even more disconcerting was Hari's contention that he had called other journalists and asked about this practice, and found it was normal. It doesn't seem that anyone's come forward to confess alongside Hari, but I'm not sure whether this is a sign that he's lying or that people saw the controversy and didn't want their own careers similarly affected. I sincerely hope this is not 'normal practice'. What Hari has essentially admitted to is quoting what he wishes his interviewees had said to him rather than what they actually did. It doesn't matter that they've said the quote before or written the thought in their books and articles. Either you ask the right questions to get the answers you want - and if they're unclear, ask more questions or request clarification - or you attribute the quotes to their original source.

Hari writes, 'My test for journalism is always - would the readers mind if you did this, or prefer it? Would they rather I quoted an unclear sentence expressing a thought, or a clear sentence expressing the same thought by the same person very recently?' He says if someone interviewed him and he was all ums and ahs and you knows, he would prefer that they just quoted his article from the previous week in which he said the same thing more coherently.

But this is disingenuous - it's (actually) normal practice for journalists to remove the ums and ahs from a quote, because this doesn't change the meaning, it just allows for a clearer thought. That's what I would prefer he do - quote a clear answer to the question he asked, not quote what he thinks the person would have liked to have said had they had the time to write down and edit their answers. I do mind what he's done; I admired his interviewing technique, the answers he was able to get out of his subjects, and I now know that some of that is fabricated. At the risk of sounding like his mother, I find the whole thing really disappointing.

I'm curious to see what the outcome of this will be. Rumour has it that Hari will run a piece in tomorrow's Independent (apologising? defending? explaining?), and I think it's unlikely that he'll stop working for them as a result of today's controversy. But the Media Standards Trust has already called for a review into Hari's 2008 Orwell Prize and his reputation has undoubtedly suffered. Will he continue with the same style of interview portraits that have been at the centre of the controversy? Will he be stripped of his Orwell Prize? I think the latter is unlikely - the prize was awarded years ago and so far there are no allegations that any of the work he received the award for is in question. But as to his writing - it's obvious that his next interview will come under very close scrutiny, by his editors and also by those who hope to catch him out.

And perhaps this is what should have been happening all along. Was Hari allowed to get away with this because he is so high-profile, or because of cuts in the industry, which meant that his work has not been subject to very close scrutiny for some time? If you're interested in that, I'd suggest reading this report on Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke, which was brought to my attention this weekend, and which touches on editors placing too much trust in reporters. Worth a read!