Johann Hari apologises for ‘error of judgment’ over interview quotes

Journalist pens tempered mea culpa saying he was after ‘intellectual’ rather than ‘reportorial’ accuracy in interviews Johann Hari, the journalist at the centre of a row over quotations from interviews, has defended his actions in print but said sorry for an “error of judgement”. The award-winning Hari said he did have “something to apologise for” after being accused of plagarism by journalists and bloggers who condemned his practice of sometimes using quotes which he presented as being made to him in interviews , when they were in fact taken from older articles or the interviewees’ own books. In Wednesday’s edition of the Independent he called accusations of plagarism against him “totally false” and denied producing “churnalism” but said he had lessons to learn. “I’ve thought carefully about whether I have been wrong here. It’s clearly not plagiarism or churnalism – but was it an error in another way? Yes. I now see it was wrong, and I wouldn’t do it again.”. Hari’s article is yet to be published on the Independent’s website. In a blog entitled Interview Etiquette on Tuesday Hari defended his methods, saying he only ever substituted quotes with the writer’s own previous writings that expressed the same sentiment expounded in the interview, but more clearly. In the Independent, he wrote: “I have sometimes substituted a passage they have written or said more clearly elsewhere on the same subject for what they said to me, so the reader understands their point as clearly as possible. “The quotes are always accurate representations of their words, inserted into the interview at the point where they made substantively the same argument using similar but less clear language.” He added: “I did not and never have taken words from another context and twisted them to mean something different.” Hari pointed out that in 10 years of interviews he had not received a single complaint from the people he had interviewed. “It depends whether you prefer the intellectual accuracy of describing their ideas in their most considered words, or the reportorial accuracy of describing their ideas in the words they used on that particular afternoon,” he further argued. “Since my interviews are long intellectual profiles, not ones where I’m trying to ferret out a scoop or exclusive, I have, in the past, prioritised the former. “That was, on reflection, a mistake, because it wasn’t clear to the reader.”. Hari was lambasted on Twitter by readers and fellow journalists who called his professional ethics into question. The controversy also spawned a array of jokes, in which famous historical moments were recounted to Hari, as though in an interview. In his article, Hari thanked those who had helped him realise that “an interview is not just an essayistic representation of what the person thinks; it is a report on an encounter between the interviewer and interviewee”. He concluded: “I’m sorry, and I’m grateful to the people who pointed out this error of judgement. I will make sure I learn from it.” The Independent Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Alexandra Topping guardian.co.uk

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