L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

31 July 2007 Blog Home : July 2007 : Permalink

Johan Hari Does NOT Make Things Up

But he does apparently have a delicate sense of honour or so it appears from a little spat that appears to be going at Harry's Place. A post there which is readily visible at present in the cache chez Google, has been replaced by the one linked above because:

Sadly Johann Hari is threatening me with defamation proceedings. He takes the view that this piece, and the comments which follow it, contain defamatory material.

Given that most of the disputed post is simply a quote from Nick Cohen's defense of his book from Hari's review it seems odd that Mr Hari finds the post defamatory. The obvious conclusion is that Mr Hari takes offense at being called a tabloid jounralist because I'm sure that it would be unreasonable to feel that he was insulted by a statement that "a serious academic commentator or non-tabloid journalist" with "a reputation for making things up" might face the end of his career.

Such a statement is clearly untrue anyway. Recent events at The New Republic and the NY Times, amongst others, show that there are many career opportunites for non-tabloid journalists who make things up.

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