Talk:Johann Hari

When should new books be added?
He's about to publish a new book. When can that be added to the Wikipedia article for an author? It's already scheduled and he's enough of a pro to be confident it will actually happen, too. But now that I think about it that way, anything that prevented it from reaching the market at this stage would be worth mentioning in the article... Shanen (talk) 18:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm sure there's a long policy on this somewhere but there is no problem mentioning a forthcoming book, or other publication once there are reliable sources available to cite. Ktlynch (talk) 16:54, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

There's a book titled "Wolves Eat Lambs: The Pornography of Power" with a chapter on Johann Hari. As illuminating as the determined campaign to keep this wikipedia page spic n' span. Doubtless Hari will marshal the forces of digital darkness… littera scripta manet. The man he's a sickly amanuensis for, Mr Brand, I dearly wish he were over in the Russian frontlines… whose conduct he excused so vacuously, and so dreadfully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:8B06:5F01:7D17:ED0C:EDDA:F59B (talk) 01:50, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

And… paperback and hardback alike, 'temporarily out of stock': in its first week. You're a piece of work, Hari. It's impressive. Undeniably impressive. The way Dr. Goebbels or Bernays were impressive. Mercifully, we live in a digital age of eBooks and again, littera script manet.
 * unsigned]] comment added by 2A00:23C7:8B06:5F01:7D17:ED0C:EDDA:F59B

RfC about the first paragraph of Johann Hari bio
Should the first paragraph of the article mention that Hari was disgraced for plagiarism and fabrication, and that experts question the reliability of his current books? The first paragraph is excerpted in the Google results page for “Johann Hari” so it is of particular significance.

89.213.33.52 (talk) 18:47, 14 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The Johann Hari article is unusual among biographical articles of disgraced journalists in that it does not mention that Hari was disgraced for plagiarism, fabrication and smearing his critics in the first paragraph. Compare the articles for Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. The Hari article is unusual in that it starts a separate paragraph to discuss the subject's misconduct.
 * The Google search results for "Johann Hari" show the first paragraph only, meaning that the effect of deferring mention of his misconduct to the second paragraph is that it's harder for a casual browser to discover. Any edit that tries to add a mention of the misconduct into the first paragraph or short description is reverted with flimsy or nonsensical pretexts.
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johann_Hari&type=revision&diff=1071927473&oldid=1071866050 - Revirvlkodlaku claims being an admitted plagiarist is an "unnecessary detail"
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johann_Hari&type=revision&diff=1070608789&oldid=1070600794 TSP says "this is already covered in the second paragraph of the lead, it doesn't need to be in every sentence" - the first paragraph contains multiple sentences and there is no reason why it couldn't contain more. Editors are inventing reasons that don't apply to other articles about disgraced journalists - for example, first paragraph of Stephen Glass has four sentences, Janet Cooke has five. MedianJoe (talk) 12:06, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * This getting to be a common "complaint" at Wikipedia - that content has to change to suit "the casual browser" at Google. Why should Wikipedia have to suit the constraints of Google search? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:14, 15 February 2022 (UTC)


 * It's not that Wikipedia has to change to suit Google searches. It's that every other article about a disgraced journalist mentions that they were disgraced in the first paragraph. The article about Hari is an outlier, because it has been changed to keep a very relevant detail *out* of the initial Google search. This is a case where the desired Google search results are changing what's on Wikipedia. The only reason I can think that Hari's article is such an outlier is that he is paying a reputation management company to minimise the appearance of his misconduct when you Google him. MedianJoe (talk) 12:50, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * How many articles about "disgraced journalist" are there? I guess we have Category:Journalistic scandals. The others might be "wrong"; the others might have different emphasis; the others might have paid editors doing Google's dirty work? I note that the IP editor who opened this thread above says: "The first paragraph is excerpted in the Google results page for "Johann Hari" so it is of particular significance." Martinevans123 (talk) 13:07, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * In the 'See also' section of the Hari article there are links to the pages for 9 disgraced journalists, and the scandals category contains many more. The Hari article is the outlier, because of the way it downplays his misconduct, thanks to the efforts of a few editors reverting perfectly valid edits with weird pretexts. MedianJoe (talk) 13:35, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Have you compared all nine? But even if you have, as I said above, these other articles may be different in terms of emphasis; so a direct comparison, just on this one single metric, might not be useful. It's going to be very difficult to confirm that anonymous IP editors are being "paid by Hari" to make his article look better. It would be difficult to prove any kind of "organised pattern" at all? These would just remain conspiracy theories? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:42, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The aim of this discussion is not to prove a conspiracy, but to decide if the first paragraph should mention the misconduct. Yes I've looked at the other 9 articles, and they describe broadly similar cases of journalistic misconduct, so it's hard to come up with a good reason why the misconduct shouldn't be mentioned in the first paragraph. None of the reasons presented really hold up. In my opinion the first paragraph should be chronological, describing his misconduct first and then introducing the books that he wrote afterwards: "Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British journalist and writer. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent, and then resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and making pejorative edits to Wikipedia pages about journalists who had criticised his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the effect of technology on attention spans." MedianJoe (talk) 17:09, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I disagree that anything should be removed. His early career should come before the plagiarism, even if it's in one paragraph. His later career, with the books, could come after. So you may wish to propose another re-write. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * How about this for the rewrite: "Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British-Swiss writer and journalist who wrote for publications including The Independent and The Huffington Post. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent, and then resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and making pejorative edits to the Wikipedia pages about journalists who had criticised his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the effect of technology on attention spans." Obviously I will retain all links and references. This 3 sentence paragraph retains all the info, captures the whole arc of his career and is comparable to the introductory paragraphs for similar disgraced journalists.

MedianJoe (talk) 14:20, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * No objections. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:36, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure this needed to be a formal RfC. It looks like the other editor's objection was redundancy, which I agree with... you should not mention the misconduct twice in the lead in two separate paragraphs. The solution is to merge the two paragraphs as per MedianJoe above. That's a great rewritten lead, let's go with that. Fieari (talk) 04:00, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yep, rewrite looks good, go for it. Probably didn't need an RFC; definitely didn't need the personal attacks and failure to assume good faith in this and the previous section - avoid those in future, and . TSP (talk) 19:37, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I've made the edit and closed the RFC per WP:RFCEND point 5, as consensus is clear (rewrite proposed a week ago, no comments opposing it). TSP (talk) 19:46, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Tidying up scandal content
Now the air seems to have cleared a little, I was planning to try to clean up the scandal section a bit.

I've started by breaking out the 2011 scandal into its own section - I think that's reasonable, it seems to be a reasonably well-defined and notable section of Hari's life.

Currently a lot of this content is in the form of lists of single-sentence paragraphs that just say things like "Hari was also found to have...". When did he do this, who found it out, where was it reported, what effect did that have, how did it relate to other accusations and revelations?

Basically, the section needs to read as a narrative, not a laundry list. (This also means parts of this content may turn out to belong in other sections, if they aren't related to the 2011 scandal.) TSP (talk) 13:44, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Switzerland
I'm curious about his Swiss background. Interviews with him refer to his father being an immigrant from Switzerland to Scotland (I presume, because his mother is Scottish and he was born in Glasgow). But what then? The infobox gives him citizenship of United Kingdom and Switzerland. How do we know the latter is correct? I haven't seen any references that ever mention any connection he has to Switzerland, other than his father. Hari is also described as "British-Swiss" in the opening sentence. Is that correct? Is that how he sees himself? I don't know. Compare to how Wikipedia introduction sections describe Michael Portillo as British, Emma Raducanu as British, Keanu Reeves as Canadian and Naomi Osaka as Japanese. Mika is useful because whilst he's described as "Lebanese-born British", his infobox stating US citizenship is backed up by a reference. This takes me back to Johann Hari. Should "British-Swiss" be replaced with "British" and/or should the Switzerland citizenship be take out? Seaweed (talk) 17:17, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Now he's described as Scottish with citizenship as United Kingdom and Switzerland, the latter unreferenced. Seaweed (talk) 19:36, 2 July 2024 (UTC)