Johann Hari Stripped Of Orwell Prize In Fabrication Row

British columnist Johann Hari has been stripped of the Orwell Prize, one of Britain's most prestigious journalism awards.

The organizers of the prize announced that they had reached a "clear and unanimous decision" on Monday, following accusations that Hari fabricated parts of his award-winning piece. Though the organizers refused to announce the decision in public, it is all-but-certain that the prize has been revoked.

Hari won the prize in 2008 in part for his emotional account of covert French military action inside the Central African Republic. The integrity of the article is now in question after the charity that brought him there alleged that he exaggerated the extent of destruction in the country and made up quotes. Perhaps the most notable deviation from the facts, they charged, was a fabricated quote attributed to a French soldier saying, "Children would bring us the severed heads of their parents and scream for help, but our orders were not to help them."

The charity worker who translated for Hari on the trip reiterated these charges on Wednesday, telling the Telegraph she is "absolutely adamant that the soldiers didn’t say that children came brandishing the heads of their relatives." The charity—which is remaining anonymous to avoid being tarred by Harri—also released emails it had sent to the columnist in 2007, questioning his delay in sending it notes and taking issue with several of his quotes.

Calls for the embattled British journalist to hand back the prize began when he was accused of plagiarism in July. The Independent later suspended him for two months after allegations that he trashed the Wikipedia pages of fellow journalists who had criticized his work.

The Independent has also launched its own internal inquiry into Hari's work. In response, Hari issued a one sentence statement: "The Independent has asked me not to make any public comment until its inquiry has reported in September."

Comments

[Kiz boy]

02:07 PM on 07/28/2011

Too bad. He's a talented writer. Should try fiction instead.

[susangalea]

06:19 PM on 07/28/2011

I actually don't think he is a talented writer. He tends to be rather hysterical and makes massively damning judgments and comments without the substantive evidence that a more diligent journalist would provide. The fact he has had no journalistic training is apparent and his pronouncements on economic matters, for example, are woeful. He doesn't even understand basic Keynesianism and gets a good deal of economic modelling and theory back to front. He seems to think that Keynes posited a model in the centre of a vacuum. It's risible.

Some of the lies he has told about the Central African Republic and his claim that the French soldiers were approached by children carrying the heads of their slain parents is a complete lie. He said the soldiers told him they could not help the children because they were ordered not to. Another complete lie. Hari doesn't speak French and the charity organizer who he inveigled -actually pressured- to translate for him has written to a journalist of the Telegraph newspaper in the UK to make this clear. Her version of events is corroborated by others that were there. Interestingly two interns supported Hari to the extent they said they thought that the soldiers had said something similar. Trouble is they didn't speak French either! It's disgraceful what is now common knowledge in Britain.

[gingersaff]

08:49 AM on 07/28/2011

Jeez. This guy shoulda jumped across the pond and come to work for a respected news organization like Fox. He could've been writing his fiction all along without fear of reprisal or anything. Fox went to court to defend its right to present their political screeds as real news, and WON. Yes, it's true. The Florida Court of Appeals sided with Fox, affirming that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying news in the United States. No messy retractions, no giving back journalism prizes (wait, does Fox HAVE any?), no apologies, no calling them out in any way, shape or form for poisoning the well with their particular brand of disinformation. And for us it was not even a blip on the radar (yawn). We in the United States know and love our infotainment sources too much to see them hobbled by silly requirements to tell us the truth. The Orwell Prize organizers should just get with the program.

[fiberinspector]

01:00 AM on 07/28/2011

WOW NO left wingers on here defending their lying reporters.
Who da thought

[cometboy]

02:16 AM on 07/28/2011

Nope. If he's a liar, he deserves what he gets. Most people here understand that and wouldn't defend his actions no matter what his politics are. I realize that the idea of having some integrity about such things is completely alien to the folks on your side, but maybe if you hang around huffpost long enough, some of it might rub off.

[Macready]

05:43 AM on 07/28/2011

fanned & fav'd cometboy . . . well said

[LogicalMathMan]

02:12 PM on 07/28/2011

F&F.

[girlgoneriled]

04:06 AM on 07/28/2011

Of course not. We're not like you guys. When our side lies, we're happy to see them called out on it. It's called, caring about the truth. What a concept, huh?

[waynesmyer]

08:11 AM on 07/28/2011

But! But! Rupert The Red Nose wouldn't try to bribe Scotland Yard! WOULD HE???

[jrodmob]

12:36 AM on 07/28/2011

So does obama lose his peace prize for illegaly sending soldiers to pakistan and bombing libya?

[fiberinspector]

01:02 AM on 07/28/2011

no once you buy something you normallty get to keep it

[ptrgamb]

12:32 AM on 07/28/2011

Cheatsie proves!

[pitsday]

11:02 PM on 07/27/2011

Who's the first to be asked to return his Nobel, the Warmonger in chief or the fat-fraud Al Gore?

[MrRE]

11:28 PM on 07/27/2011

Good question. Sounds like a coin-toss to me. LOLOLOL

[jrodmob]

12:37 AM on 07/28/2011

get a 2 headed quarter so they can both choose cheads

[jeanbaker0]

11:01 PM on 07/27/2011

He's a journalist - what do you expect?

[2083]

12:50 AM on 07/28/2011

Journalists report the news, Fiction writers make it up.

[cwctx]

05:41 PM on 07/28/2011

Some Journalists (not all) want so desperately to win awards and please their piers that they will do this and worse. They spew the "right of the people to know" as though they were out defending our chastity when in fact, they are trying to win the big one and have So-in-So notice their work and get promoted and raises and finally make the big-time at a network.

[ingodsfaith83]

11:01 PM on 07/27/2011

Left wing propaganda is always lying and miss quoting. Why do you think we are always fighting so many wars??

[OLEGAR]

02:27 AM on 07/28/2011

dam i failed civics i thought geo whoosh was a repub who started wars

[girlgoneriled]

04:09 AM on 07/28/2011

"Miss quoting" :)

How cute. Now they're blaming wars on the left. *eye roll*

[Gardenpass]

10:42 PM on 07/27/2011

Raised in a Socialist Country, doing what Socialists do.........

[Enroh Mot]

03:33 AM on 07/28/2011

He wasn't raised in Norway who now have to deal with a right-wing terrorist.

[girlgoneriled]

04:07 AM on 07/28/2011

Oh yeah. Right-wingers NEVER lie. lol.

[David Jeffers]

10:30 PM on 07/27/2011

As I have been saying for quite some time now. "The media is borderline manufacturing the news".

This just goes to show that they will do anything for the story...Remember Richard Jewel?

[masoninman]

10:17 PM on 07/27/2011

Did Hari invent a statement from climate scientist James Hansen?

In Hari's 2008 Independent article, "Bangladesh is set to disappear under the waves by the end of the century," included a statement about a forecast by famous climate scientist James Hansen:

"He [Hansen] believes the melting of the Greenland ice cap being picked up by his satellites today, now, suggests we are facing a 25-metre rise in sea levels this century – which would drown Bangladesh entirely."

It is true that a 25-metre sea-level rise would drown almost all of Bangladesh—but Hansen has to my knowledge never predicted anything close to that. The highest he has said is "several meters" by 2100.

The difference between what Hari wrote and what scientists are actually saying is huge: it's the difference between the whole country disappearing underwater (as his shocking headline says) or about 15% of the country disappearing (which is still tragic, but not as shocking). If Hari had used Hansen's actual prediction, it would completely undermine his story's catchy headline.

I ran across this error while doing research for my own reporting trips to Bangladesh. I wrote to Hari and to the Independent about the error in October 2008, a few months after Hari's article was published, but they never responded.

At the time, I wondered if Hari had somehow confused feet and meters. Now I think that wasn't the problem.

More details on all this are on my blog: http://failinggracefully.com/?p=856

[patsijean]

05:20 PM on 07/28/2011

I am really sorry that these things happened because the issues being discussed will be diminished in importance because of Hari's exaggeration and lies. As a person who stands on the left side of center (many readers have made this a right/left political, which it is not) I, and most people, prefer honesty.

[Barry Neunzig]

10:06 PM on 07/27/2011

That's what they mean when they say they are MAKING NEWS.

[landpermits]

10:03 PM on 07/27/2011

Like the Indian Chief said.......... Is the British Press drinking fire water.............?

[rsmall4156]

09:49 PM on 07/27/2011

I know another person that showld be stripped of his also ...... Any guesses who...

[capnamerica]

09:45 PM on 07/27/2011

Libs make up stories? who would have thought that could happen?

[Enroh Mot]

03:34 AM on 07/28/2011

Making up stories about WMD's in Iraq?

[Packattack]

03:45 AM on 07/28/2011

Like making up stories to invade a foreign country for personal gain? Maybe if you read and learn(learn means literacy but republicans back illiteracy) you would see that republicans in office have lied. But first you have to stop denying the truth period. Stop listening to Fox News, rush limbaugh, O'Reily and other HATE mongers who spread nothing but lies.

[cwctx]

05:44 PM on 07/28/2011

I like to get my hate from KO, Schultz and Jenk. Those mongers hate more like me