I take it you now accept that the allegations against Hari were not ludicrous, as you were maintaining a few weeks back.

“A source lamented to Liberal Conspiracy: “What if I need to get some information over the phone by pretending to be someone else, in the public interest?””

I’ve been a news reporter for 13 years and I’ve never had to do this. But then I’m the type of news reporter who thinks national newspaper journalism is very poor.

Sadly, the new guidelines have not stopped the Indy recycling old news as exclusives – yesterday’s front page splash about Steve Whittamore and Operation Motorman was already old news:

http://zelo.tv/nAhSOU

All you needed to have done was to buy a copy of Flat Earth News (three years ago), or read the Guardian (two years ago).

“The guidelines state journalists have to get permission from an editor even if they want to do something as simple as ‘blagging’ over the phone.

“A source lamented to Liberal Conspiracy: ‘What if I need to get some information over the phone by pretending to be someone else, in the public interest?’

“‘Do I have to call my editor every time? It’s a bit ridiculous isn’t it?’ added the source.’”

Really? Or is this a spoof?

I wish I could be an editor at the Indy; anyone who called asking for permission to ‘blag’ would simply… be fired. Or perhaps shot.

“The guidelines state journalists have to get permission from an editor even if they want to do something as simple as “blagging” over the phone.”

Is this some sort of a joke, Sunny? Isn’t this an example of the sort of unethical press behaviour which we’ve all been condemning the tabloids for getting up to over the last few years?

Hari has been a naughty boy, but how bad is he? Did he seriously distort what people said when he ‘borrowed’ parts of already published interviews for his own articles?

No doubt the Guardian will get on its high horse about it. Read the Medialens reports here and here and here about actual distortions in its pages, far worse than anything Hari has done.

I gather that if Johann goes to work in the Indy office in a few months time after he has had “training” that he better watch his back because many of the proper journalists might show their true feelings about him.

Who would want to work with a self-confessed fraud and who would want to be interviewed by a piss-poor journalist. He should stick to writing books where his skills would be more useful.

Isn’t this an example of the sort of unethical press behaviour which we’ve all been condemning the tabloids for getting up to over the last few years?

What? If you call up an arms manufacturer to ask a question, but don’t tell them you’re a journalist – that is unethical? What bizarro world do you live in?

A ‘bizarro world’ in which I hold people I like to the same standards as those who I do not like, Sunny. I hope that isn’t too controversial for you. I don’t really care if it’s the Indy, the Guardian or the Scum doing it, darling, it’s still grossly unethical.

‘Strict guidelines’ for Indie journalists? Surely after the Hari case there should only be three:

(1) Don’t steal chunks of other people’s interviews and claim them as your own.
(2) Don’t lift text verbating from interviewees work, and pass them of as the products of your own interviews.
(3) Don’t make shit up when you write an exclusive report from the field.

As for Hari Potter himself, he should be sacked. Compare and contrast the NYT with Jayson Blair with the Indie’s conduct on this matter.

8. Sunny Hundal

What? If you call up an arms manufacturer to ask a question, but don’t tell them you’re a journalist – that is unethical? What bizarro world do you live in?

If you tell them you’re someone else or you deliberately allow them to think you’re someone else, then yes, it is unethical. Just as it would be unethical to tell a girl you’re the Rolling Stone’s tour manager and you can get her back passes if she sleeps with you. Why is this even a question?

And being an arms manufacturer has nothing to do with it.

I find the element of schadenfreude in all this (particularly from the regressives) rather emetic, to be honest.

Yes, Hari made a number of egregious mistakes and has to pay the price for them, especially considering the harm he has done to some of the progressive causes he has been most vocal in supporting.

Many of those mistakes could be down this (from his apology):

“I will be undertaking a programme of journalism training. (I rose very fast in journalism straight from university.)”

He’s a good writer. He is not (yet) a good journalist. Let us wait and see what happens when he comes back. After all, he’s hardly in the Coulson league of stewed-in-the-pot corruption, is he?

I wonder if the Indie will begin to engender many highly respectable and responsibly reported articles like this one.

*runs for the hills*

Cylux @13:

Nah, it’d have to be a Russian basketball player. After all, she could see it from her house.

@14, at 11 inches you should be able to see it from most houses.

Me, I was hoping that the Indy’s response would be to hire a few fact checkers, some subs perhaps who were not just the alter egos of their columnists.

Hey ho, shows how much I know about the business then.

@ The Judge (6.32pm)

Would you be defending Hari’s conduct if it weren’t for the fact that you support his politics?

As for the question of whether he is a ‘great writer’ or not, he is not supposed to be employed by the Indie to write fiction – although that it what he’s been doing ever since he falsely claimed to have witnessed Carlo Giuliani’s death at the Genoa G8 summit riots in 2001?

And if he is a ‘great writer’, then why has he been reduced to nicking quotes from his interviewees’ work to pass off as the results of his own efforts?

This is not a matter for remedial training. This should be grounds for the sack. Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass walked for less than this.

I’m frustrated because I used to respect the ‘Independent’ as a newspaper. Before today, Hari’s serial misconduct and deceit was his problem, and arguably that of a handful of individuals like Kelner. Now it’s the ‘Independent’s’ problem as a whole. The paper’s great and good have shown by their conduct that essential failures of integrity and honesty are not a problem. The ‘Independent’ used to be committed to honest journalism. That commitment is now dead.

@16

Where did I defend Hari’s conduct? If you read what I actually wrote rather than what you assumed by confirmation bias I wrote, you will see that I did not defend his conduct.

I also said that he was a good writer, not a ‘great’ one. By that, what I meant was that I found/find his style to be interesting, engaging and at times amusing. That this was put to the service of damaging conduct is extremely sad, but I find the sanctimony of most of the commentators on this story to be repulsive. You’d think he’d hacked into a dead girl’s phone the way some of them are carrying on.

@ The Judge.

OK, so I misread ‘great’ as ‘good’. But I still fail to see why you think that a plagiarist is worth that accolade.

As for his methods; well yes, he didn’t hack into Millie Dowler’s phone, he didn’t do the same to the bereaved relatives of war dead from Iraq and Afghanistan, and he didn’t listen into Sara Payne’s private messages, so well done him, eh?

Actually, I regard that defence with much the same degree of disdain as those who – during the expenses scandal – wanted to give our MPs a free pass because they weren’t as corrupt as those from Nigeria, India or Russia.

I’m not going to applaud Hari for not acting like a tabloid hack, because I expect him to be something else. But clearly he is not, and he never was.

The man you praise is by my count (and scanning tinterweb and ‘Private Eye’) guilty of the following:

8 counts of distorted or embellished reporting.
5 counts of passing off interviees own writings as the product of his own interviews.
2 counts of misrepresenting the views of his subjects.
3 counts of straight forward plagiarism.

Those are the ones that are on record. Whittam-Smith and Blackhurst know the rest.

Judge@12

So you think someone needs a special training course to learn that you don’t copy other people’s work and pass it off as your own, and that you don’t spread malicious lies about people who have annoyed you in some way? Most of us have learned that by the age of 10.

There are two things about Hari’s behaviour that means he won’t be rehabilitated.

1. Ir’s not high flown journalist ethics he’s flouted, it’s what most of us have learned in primary school about telling lies.
2. He’s made himself ridiculous. Anyone with an ounces of satire in them can do a piss-take of Hari interviewing Churchill, Kennedy etc.

About the blagging – do people think it would be wrong to pretend to be in some general category of person in order to do some legitimate research – eg to find out something about a university’s clearing system, or to find out whether B & Bs are discriminating against gay couples or something. I read a piece recently about a woman who sampled different pregnancy advisory bodies – she pretended to be pregnant – was that wrong?