Thursday, July 14, 2011

Independent Journalist Suspended

Johann Hari, of the Independent, was suspended on Tuesday following allegations of plagiarism.

He was condemned by other journalists and bloggers for lifting quotes from alternative sources and implying they came out of his interviews.

He is now also facing claims that he used an online alias to hit back at his critics. Hari apparently used the alias to make ‘unflattering’ edits to Wiki’s for Nick Cohen (the Observer and the Spectator) and Christina Odone (Daily Telegraph), among others.

Kelner, ex-editor of the Independent, said that he felt what Hari did was wrong but felt that many journalists were blowing it out of proportion.

Hari admitted he had done something wrong but proclaimed that this was not plagiarism and insisted that all quotes he used portrayed an accurate impression of what the interviewee was trying to say and he just sourced more articulate expressions of their thoughts that had been voiced at other times.

Hari’s Orwell prize, which he received for political journalism will stand, as no allegations have been made concerning the pieces for which he was given the award.

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