Johann Hari | |
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.jpg) Hari in 2011 | |
| Born | Johann Eduard Hari (1979-01-21)21 January 1979 (age 47) Glasgow, Scotland |
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| Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge |
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| Notable work | Chasing the Scream |
| Website | johannhari |
Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British writer and journalist. Until 2011, Hari wrote forThe Independent, among other outlets, before resigning after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct.[1][2] He has since written books on the topics ofdepression, thewar on drugs, the effect of technology onattention span, andanti-obesity medication, which have attracted criticism for inaccuracies and misrepresentation.
Hari was born inGlasgow, Scotland to a Scottish mother and Swiss father,[1] before his family relocated to London when he was an infant.[3] His father was a bus driver, and mother was a nurse. Later on in life, his mother worked in shelters for survivors of domestic violence.[4] Hari states he was physically abused in his childhood while his father was away and his mother was ill.[5]
He attended theJohn Lyon School, anindependent school affiliated withHarrow, and thenWoodhouse College, a statesixth form inFinchley.[6] Hari graduated fromKing's College, Cambridge in 2001 with adouble first in social and political sciences.[7]
In 2000, Hari was joint winner ofThe Times Student News Journalist of the Year award for his work on the Cambridge student newspaper,Varsity.
After university, he joined theNew Statesman, where he worked between 2001 and 2003, and then wrote two columns a week forThe Independent. At the 2003Press Gazette Awards, he wonYoung Journalist of the Year.[8] A play by Hari,Going Down in History, was performed at the Garage Theatre inEdinburgh, and his bookGod Save the Queen? was published by Icon Books in 2002.[8]
Hari supported theIraq War.[9] In 2005, Hari wrote an article inThe Independent entitled "Pinter does not deserve the Nobel Prize", arguing thatHarold Pinter, due to a misguided and misinformed anti-imperialist and anti-war stance, should not have been awarded theNobel Prize in Literature. Pinter's authorised biographer,Michael Billington, commented that Hari "dismissed [Pinter's] Lecture in advance [of its broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK] as a 'rant' and falsely claimed that Pinter would have refused to resistHitler."[10] In 2009, he was named byThe Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people onthe left in Britain.[11]
In June 2011, bloggers atDeterritorial Support Group, as well asYahoo! Ireland editor Brian Whelan, discovered that Hari had plagiarised material published in other interviews and writings by his interview subjects.[12][13] For example, a 2009 interview withAfghan women's rights activistMalalai Joya included quotations from her bookRaising My Voice in a manner that made them appear as if spoken directly to Hari.[14] A piece entitled "How Multiculturalism Is Betraying Women" which Hari submitted when entering the Orwell Prize was plagiarised fromDer Spiegel.[15]
Hari initially denied any wrongdoing, stating that the unattributed quotes were for clarification and did not present someone else's thoughts as his own.[16][17] However, he later said that his behaviour was "completely wrong" and that "when I interviewed people, I often presented things that had been said to other journalists or had been written in books as if they had been said to me, which was not truthful."[18] Hari was suspended for two months fromThe Independent[19][2] and in January 2012 it was announced that he was leaving the newspaper.[20]
TheMedia Standards Trust instructed the council of theOrwell Prize, who had given their 2008 prize to Hari, to examine the allegations.[21][22] The council concluded that "the article contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else's story" and did not meet the standards of Orwell Prize-winning journalism.[23][24] Hari returned the prize,[25] though he did not return the prize money of £2,000.[26] He later offered to repay the sum, butPolitical Quarterly, which had paid the prize money, instead invited him to make a donation toEnglish PEN, of whichGeorge Orwell had been a member. Hari arranged with English PEN to make a donation equal to the value of the prize, to be paid in installments when he returned to work atThe Independent, but he did not return to work there.[27]
As early as 2000, Hari was criticised byBen Elton in the letters page ofVarsity for inaccuracies including stating that only Jews can be Israeli citizens.[28] In addition to plagiarism, Hari was found to have fabricated elements of stories.[29] In one of the stories for which he won the 2008 Orwell Prize, he reported on atrocities in the Central African Republic, stating that French soldiers told him that "Children would bring us the severed heads of their parents and scream for help, but our orders were not to help them." However, an NGO worker who translated for Hari said that the quotation was invented and that Hari exaggerated the extent of the devastation in the CAR.[30][31] In his apology after his plagiarism was exposed, Hari said that other staff of the NGO had supported his version of events.[32][33]
In a 2010 article about military robots, Hari falsely claimed that former Japanese prime ministerJunichiro Koizumi was attacked by a factory robot and was nearly killed.[34][35][15] Hari falsely claimed that a large globe erected for the Copenhagen climate summit was "covered with corporate logos" forMcDonald's andCarlsberg, with "theCoke brand ... stamped over Africa."[15]Private Eye's Hackwatch column also suggested that he pretended to have used the drug ecstasy and misrepresented a two-week package tour in Iraq as a one-month research visit, in order to bolster support for the Iraq war by stating that Iraqi civilians he spoke to were in favour of an invasion, although in an earlier article[36] he had given a conflicting account stating that Iraqis were reticent about their opinions.[37]
While Hari was working at theNew Statesman, the magazine's deputy editor,Cristina Odone, doubted the authenticity of quotations in a story he wrote. When she asked to see his notebooks, he said that he had lost them. After discovering that Hari had lost a position at the Cambridge student newspaper for allegedly unethical behaviour, Odone went to the magazine’s editor, Peter Wilby, but without result. Odone subsequently found that her Wikipedia entry had been altered by Hari, using hissock puppet account of "David Rose", to falsely accuse her of homophobia and anti-Semitism.[15]
Hari has been accused of misrepresenting writing byGeorge Galloway,Eric Hobsbawm, Nick Cohen andNoam Chomsky.[38][15]
In September 2011, Hari admitted that he had edited articles onWikipedia about himself and journalists with whom he had had disputes. Using asock puppet account under the name "David r from meth productions", he added false anddefamatory claims to articles about journalists includingNick Cohen,Cristina Odone,Francis Wheen,Andrew Roberts,Niall Ferguson[39] andOliver Kamm,[40] and edited the article about himself "to make him seem one of the essential writers of our times".[39]
In July 2011, Cohen wrote about the suspicious Wikipedia editing inThe Spectator,[39] prompting theNew Statesman journalistDavid Allen Green to compile evidence that Hari used the fake identity "David Rose" to pretend to be an editor who was qualified in environmental science.[41]
This led to an investigation by theWikipedia community and "David Rose" was blocked from Wikipedia.[41] Hari published an apology inThe Independent, admitting that he had been "David Rose" and writing: "I edited the entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk. I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you. I apologise to the latter group unreservedly and totally."[42]
Hari used threats ofsuing for libel to prevent critics revealing his misrepresentations.[43] After British bloggers criticised his critique of Nick Cohen'sWhat's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way for factual and interpretive errors, Hari used libel law against a blogger who wrote that "a reputation for making things up should spell career death", leading to the blogger removing the post in question.[38]
Hari's 2015 bookChasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs critiques the global prohibition of illicit drugs.[44][45] Hari also gave aTED Talk on the subject that same year. Hari argued that most addictions are functional responses to experiences and a lack of healthy supportive relationships, rather than a simple biological need for a particular substance.[46]
Due to the previous scandals, Hari put the audio of some interviews conducted forChasing the Scream online. WriterJeremy Duns criticised instances where quotes were inaccurately transcribed or misrepresented, stating that out of a sample of dozens of clips, "in almost all cases, words in quotes had been changed or omitted without being noted, often for no apparent purpose, but in several cases to subtly change the narrative."[47][48] In a review for New Matilda, Michael Brull expressed reservations about Hari's citational practices and highlighted contradictions between the narrative inChasing the Scream and a 2009 article by Hari.[49]
In January 2018, Hari's bookLost Connections, which deals with depression and anxiety, was published, with Hari citing his childhood issues, career crisis, and experiences withantidepressants andpsychotherapy as fuelling his curiosity in the subject.Kirkus Reviews praised the book.[50]
The journalist Zoe Stavri criticisedLost Connections for a lack of citations for key claims like "between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year", reliance on the work of a single researcher, treating research on a single class of antidepressants as if it applies to all antidepressants, and conflating stress and depression.[51][52] The psychologist and science writerStuart Ritchie criticised Hari for repeatedly stating that "between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year" without a clear citation. He traced the source to a pop science book rather than a review of the scientific literature.[53]
Hari's 2022 book,Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again argues that elements of modern lifestyles, including social media, are "destroying our ability to concentrate."[54] The book debuted at number seven on theNew York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending 12 February 2022.[55]
As with his previous books,Stolen Focus presents a mix of research, interviews, and first-person narrative. Hari identifies twelve factors which he says contribute to an "attention crisis". Examples include technology addictions such associal media, the increased prevalence ofchronic stress, the decline of children's exposure to outdoor play and independent exploration, and the purported influence ofultra-processed foods on brain functions. Hari suggests thatlate-stage capitalism's emphasis on profits over human well-being is partly to blame. He criticizes the tech industry for designing products that exploit people to maximize engagement.Stolen Focus also discusses the impacts of sleep deprivation and the lack of opportunities for meaningful work. Hari calls for collective action and suggests a focus on societal changes, rather than personal action.
PsychologistStuart J. Ritchie criticisedStolen Focus for over-relying on personal anecdotes while failing to cite strong evidence for the existence of shrinking attention spans.[56] The writerMatthew Sweet investigated some of the statements in the book and wrote that Hari had failed to cite the primary sources for some studies, and misrepresented the results of studies that suggested multitasking could have benefits in certain conditions. Sweet called on the publisher to withdraw the book for misinterpreting its sources.[57]
Karlin Lillington, writing for theIrish Times, praisedStolen Focus for being a more accessible companion toShoshana Zuboff's work onsurveillance capitalism, but says Hari sometimes goes too far in reducing complex topics to bullet points.[58]
Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs, Hari's first-person account of taking the weight loss drugsemaglutide, was published in 2024.[59]
Magic Pill attracted criticism for inaccuracies. Restaurant criticJay Rayner criticised Hari for incorrectly stating, inMagic Pill, that Rayner had taken Ozempic (semaglutide), which had "robbed him of his pleasure in food" in even "great restaurants in Paris" as a result. Rayner stated this was "utter bollocks"[60] – he had written inThe Observer that he would not take semaglutide, because "being a big man who loves his dinner is a profound part of me." He also did not make any mention of Paris.[61][62] Writing forThe Guardian, Tom Chivers criticised the use of references that did not support the book's claims, as well as scientific inaccuracies.[63]Private Eye magazine criticised Hari's book for what it described as false claims and dubious references.[64] A fact check byThe Daily Telegraph found six examples of "errors, outdated data and disputed claims". Hari said these errors would be corrected in future editions.[65]
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