Johann Hari denies accusations of plagiarism

Independent writer admits inserting quotes not taken from the original interviews A high profile interviewer and columnist with the Independent was at the centre of a plagiarism row and a Twitter storm on Tuesday after he said that he inserted quotes into interviews he had conducted that were taken from the subject’s writings and not from the original interview itself. Johann Hari, who has written for the newspaper over the past decade, said in a blogpost entitled “interview etiquette” written late on Monday night that he inserted quotes when “I’ve interviewed a writer” from their other published work when they’ve expressed “an idea or sentiment” more “clearly in writing than in speech”. The Orwell prize-winning writer was responding to a growing number of bloggers who had accused him in the past few days of plagiarism, starting with the Deterritorial Support Grouppppp (DSG), who compared a 2004 interview conducted by Hari with Italian Marxist Antonio Negri with a 2003 book Negri on Negri, written by Anne Dufourmantelle . Hari wrote that he was “a bit bemused to find one blogger considers this ‘plagiarism’” and described most of his interviews as “intellectual portraits”. He said that “after doing what must be over 50 interviews, none of my interviewees have ever said they had been misquoted” and added that he had called around other unnamed newspaper interviewers “and they said what I did was normal practice”. His remarks, though, prompted a flurry of mainly hostile comic tweets, and the hashtag “#interviewbyhari” ranked third in the trending categories on Twitter worldwide by Tuesday lunchtime. Other bloggers, meanwhile, raced to find other examples of alleged plagiarism. Hari’s response to the allegations was made on the writer’s personal blog, rather than on any Independent site. Since then Hari has not responded to a phone call, email and tweet seeking comment as regards his interview technique – and nor has the newspaper yet responded to the allegations and growing internet controversy. Entitled Hari Kari/Hackery the original DSG posting, written on 17 June, cited a quote Negri gave Hari on the subject of memory in that 2004 interview . “Who controls memory? Faced with the weight of memory, one must be unreasonable! Reason amounts to eternal Cartesianism. The most beautiful thing is to think ‘against’, to think ‘new’. Memory prevents revolt, rejection, invention, revolution.” The DSG blog (the writer has not chosen to reveal his or her identity) goes on to cite a passage from pages 100 and 101 of the Dufourmantelle book written a year earlier. That passage uses almost identical language to the interview quotes, beginning “Who controls memory? Faced with the weight of memory, one must be unreasonable! Reason amounts to eternal Cartesianism”. The book then has half an extra sentence: “As against Descrates, one ought to chose Gaileo instead” before continuing with almost identical language as appeared in the 2004 interview by Hari. “The most beautiful thing is to think ‘against’, to think ‘new’. Often, memory prevents revolt, rejection, invention, revolution.” That was followed by Brian Whelan, another blogger, who chose to examine other Hari interviews , doing what he called “a basic check for plagiarism”. He compared a 2010 Hari interview with controversial Israeli journalist Gideon Levy with writings by Levy in Haaretz, the newspaper for which he works. Whelan found a passage in the September 2010 interview of that year that appeared to be composed of sentences that had appeared in a column written by Levy in March. Whelan cites this passage from Hari’s interview: “After saying this, he falls silent, and we stare at each other for a while. Then he says, in a quieter voice: ‘The facts are clear. Israel has no real intention of quitting the territories or allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their rights. No change will come to pass in the complacent, belligerent, and condescending Israel of today. This is the time to come up with a rehabilitation programme for Israel.’” The same quotes, interspersed with other remarks appear in the following two paragraphs of a Levy piece written in Haaretz on 18 March 2010 . “The facts are clear: Israel has no real intention of quitting the territories or allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their rights. Israel does not truly intend to pursue peace, because life here seems to be good even without it. The continuation of the occupation doesn’t just endanger Israel’s future, it also poses the greatest risk to world peace, serving as a pretext for Israel’s most dangerous enemies. “No change will come to pass in the complacent, belligerent and condescending Israel of today. That’s why this difficult, thankless task has fallen on the shoulders of an ally, as only it has the power to get things started. No agreement will come out of another endless series of futile diplomatic trips or peace plans to which no one intends to adhere. We have tried this enough in the past, and all for naught. This is the time to come up with a rehabilitation program for Israel. The entire world, and ultimately Israel too, will applaud Barack Obama if he succeeds.” • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. 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Posted by on June 28, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.