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Diary

9 July 2011

I learned that Johann Hari was a journalist who was better at attention-seeking than truth-telling when a small American journal asked me to reply to his review of What’s Left, a book of mine on the dark forces in liberal-left politics.

In her new memoir The House in France Gully Wells describes the young Martin Amis as the most competitive man she had met. As she was his girlfriend in the 1970s, she should have known, but Amis is not remotely competitive now. When I interviewed him, he said he always refused to comment on other writers. Secure in his talent, he felt no need to do down his rivals. If Amis is self-effacing, Ian McEwan is modest to the point of shyness. He came to my last book launch and was so unobtrusive it took the throng half an hour to realise that one of England’s great writers was in the room. Hilary Mantel remains my favourite literary stoic, however. Despite her producing A Place of Greater Safety and other magnificent novels, prize juries overlooked her. After she finally won the Booker in 2009, she had every right to be triumphalist. Instead, she wrote in the Economist of how ‘once, when I was trudging home from my second failure to win the £20,000 Sunday Express award, a small boy I knew bobbed out on to the balcony of his flat. “Did you win?” I shook my head. “Never mind,” he said, just like everyone else. And then, quite unlike everyone else: “If you like, you can come up and play with my guinea pig.”’ I suspect that Mantel knew for years that she was the real thing, and just needed to wait for the rest of us to catch up.

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Andrew Dyer

July 8th, 2011 7:31pm Report this comment

Very nicely done.

I notice they've not sacked him:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-would-you-trust-a-management-consultant-with-the-worlds-rainforests-2308686.html

Fancy basing a the article on the concept of trust, what chutzpa.

James

July 9th, 2011 12:41am Report this comment

Yeah - Hari's a clint. And an ignorant one at that. His dirty little brand of journalism has been exposed as mendacious tosh. Why is he still paid for writing garbage? Tosser.

Matt

July 9th, 2011 11:11am Report this comment

Interesting info on the identity of "David R". Claims to be a sub at the Indy and a friend of Hari.:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Talk:Johann_Hari

Jono

July 9th, 2011 3:11pm Report this comment

It was obvious even before his plagiarism was exposed that Hari is a despicable and spiteful creep, fond of labelling as "racist" anyone whom he disagrees.

Jerry Hayes

July 9th, 2011 3:23pm Report this comment

David r modified (wiped pretty clean) his wiki entry at 11.21 am today

Orwell Prize

July 10th, 2011 3:58pm Report this comment

It's all cached here https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=David+r+from+meth+productions

DS

July 11th, 2011 1:47pm Report this comment

Interesting. But can anyone explain the point of the guinea pig story? I don't get it.

Rolf

July 13th, 2011 7:25am Report this comment

Hari's abuse of wikipedia is unsurprising. Many minor celebrities and writers lovingly groom their entries to make themselves appear important. The wikipedia project -- except as a grab bag of pop-culture trivia -- is fatally flawed.

Andy Gill

July 13th, 2011 3:55pm Report this comment

Hari is finally getting what he deserves for a career built on shoddy and unethical journalism.

Hopefully, his Orwell prize will now be withdrawn. He is thoroughly discredited and should be expelled from the NUJ.

Estel

July 14th, 2011 5:56pm Report this comment

Surely you could have changed the Wikipedia page? There are careful protocols for changing editing. If you provided exact references as you did to the journalist, the edits would have had to go on. Bit masochistic to just leave it?

Nick

July 31st, 2011 9:13pm Report this comment

Thanks for posting this. Hari's behaviour is far beyond suspicious at this point. How disappointing.

And for the person that thinks Wikipedia is a repository of pop trivia, you should probably be told that it is an encyclopaedia and therefore has reliable info on many scientific topics, places from small villages to big cities worldwide, languages, history, mythology and numerous other topics that are incredibly useful to many people every day, especially us writers. If you think an encyclopaedia exists to provide super accurate bios of minor contemporary/living media figures, you may be just the teensiest bit off the mark.

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