Johann Hari and David Rose
Johann Hari and David Rose is actually the same person only Johann Hari is his name in a real life and David Rose is the name he used on Wikipedia.[1] To be exact his user name on Wikipedia was David r from meth productions.
Johann Hari first edited Wikipedia as IP, and then in October of 2006 he made an account with the user name "David r from meth productions". A look at his contributions shows that the main interest of Johann Hari in editing Wikipedia was... well, Johann Hari himself.
In 2008 David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari was asked to clear copyright issues for the image of Johann Hari.In his response David r from meth productions made a few spelling errors that of course Johann Hari would never have, and promised to call Johann Hari aka David r from meth productions: "I'll call him in a minute and get him to e-mail straight awya (sic) if he can; I think he might be out of the coutnry (sic) but I'm not sure and he has an i-phone anyway so should be able to.David r from meth productions 14:24, 5 April 2008 (UTC)".
It looks like the call did not go through because in 2011 the copyright issues came back David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari was asked to email to himself to clear copyright issues for the picture of Johann Hari to be used in the article. David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari responded : "Fantastic! i have sent an e-mail to Johann now... David r from meth productions 16:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)".In other words David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari sent an email to Johann Hari aka David r from meth productions. It looks like Johann Hari aka David r from meth productions responded to David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari because the picture of Johann Hari aka David r from meth productions appeared in the article, and of course it was fantastic.
At some point Johann Hari got so confused that he made a woman sock-puppet. He called her Jessica, and gave her the user name Thelionforreal. Apparently some users suspected that Thelionforreal aka Jessica is a sock-puppet of David r from meth productions and called her "Dave". Thelionforreal aka Jessica was not happy about this: "Felix, I resent the fact that you have responded to my last post by addressing me as 'Dave'. You could call me on 0161 256 1624 and verify that I am Jessica. You could answer the points that I raise and address me politely.".
There is no doubt David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari was fond of Johann Hari aka David r from meth productions: "For you to posture about Johann Hari, accusing him of advocating "the destruction of untermenschen", while defending this blatant anti-Semite, is disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself. When did you last risk your life going to Congo, Gaza, the West Bank etc, as Hari does regularly? You are too busy defending racists. - Dave.17:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC). David r from meth productions Wikipedia's fight against anti-Semites and racists would have even deserved a credit, if in a real life Johann Hari would have done the same, but in a real life Johann Hari was known as notoriously anti-Israeli. Interestingly enough on Wikipedia David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari succeeded in keeping these legitimate concerns out of the article about himself.
Johann Hari's aka David r from meth productions's Wikipedia's adventures could have gone unnoticed, if he continued with his telephoning and sending emails to himself, and telling the world how brave he is, but with the time passed it was no longer enough. Johann Hari aka David r from meth meth productions decided to fight his opponents, using their Wikipedia entries as weapons. For example Nick Cohen was very surprised, when he read in his Wikipedia's entry that he "was a probable alcoholic, a hypocrite and a supporter of Sarah Palin". Nick Cohen was so upset with his Wikipedia entry that he even wished he were able to "relieve Jimmy Wales of a part of his fortune". Cohen writes: "The fearsome honour code by which hacks abide insists that no journalist can sue for libel — if you give it, you must take it. I bowed to its stern injunctions while wishing that my colleagues would grant me a release just this once so that I might relieve Jimmy Wales of a part of his fortune.". On a side note, if Nick Cohen ever tried to relieve Mr. Wales of a part of his fortune he would not have succeeded. Mr. Wales has no fortune because Mr. Wales says that Wikipedia is a non-profit organization.
In Wikipedia entry's for Cristina Odone David r from meth productions aka Johann Hari wrote "She has been accused of anti-Semitism, a charge which a British court found to be libellous." It got worse. Editing as IP (without logging in), Johann Hari wrote that Cristina Odone "is widely regarded as an anti-Semite.". This latest claim forced Odone's husband Edward Lucas to defend his wife's reputation on Wikipedia.[2]
Johann Hari got so involved with the imaginary David Rose that he even mentioned Rose in his own blog. Tom Chivers writes in The Telegraph: "At one stage Johann Hari quotes David Rose in his blog, giving him biographical details like "a starred first from a degree specialising in environmental science at Cambridge, and extensive work in Antarctica observing the effects of global warming", to support a point Hari himself is making. Green counts "at least fifteen biographical facts (from a lawyer girlfriend in Walthamstow and subbing jobs at the Independent and Spectator, to a principled and noisy opposition to the invasion of Iraq)" about David Rose, none of which were true, because there is no David Rose. "(It) was a fluent stream of lies contrived just so that the systemic smear campaign and dishonest self-promotional exercise could carry on and never be exposed", he says.Snowdon mentions an example in which two apparent Hari sockpuppets, David Rose and "Jessica", talk amongst themselves and pretend to get in touch with Hari himself over the choice of picture on his Wikipedia entry, and another in which he spent some time "emphasising his own importance as a major cultural figure".".
Piers Morgan hurried to Hari's defense. Morgan used his twitter account to write this: "Got to laugh at all the British journalists moralising about Johann Hari.Such paragons of ethically perfect virtue, one and all. Not. Even a flawed Johann Hari is considerably more principled and valuable as a journalist than most of his hypocritical critics., but here's the problem: Morgan himself was laid off the Mirror after authorizing the newspaper's publication of fake photographs allegedly showing Iraqi prisoners being abused by British Army soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.[3]
Hari admitted "he did two wrong and stupid things" and has chosen a punishment for himself:he's going to return Orwell Prize (not such big of a deal because it was going to be taken away anyway with or without Hari's agreement to return it), take four months of unpaid vacation and to undertake a programme of journalism training.[4] The real question is how "a programme of journalism training" could help Hari to become an honest and a decent, no, not even a journalist, but an honest and a decent person.
Refernces
- ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Johann Hari (2011). "Johann Hari: A personal apology". Archived from the original on
|archive-url=requires|archive-date=(help). Retrieved 2011-09-18.I started to notice some things I didn’t like in the Wikipedia entry about me, so I took them out. To do that, I created a user-name that wasn’t my own. Using that user-name, I continued to edit my own Wikipedia entry and some other people’s too. I took out nasty passages about people I admire – like Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot, Deborah Orr and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I factually corrected some other entries about other people. But in a few instances, I edited the entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk.
Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Nick Cohen (2011). "Diary". Archived from the original on
|archive-url=requires|archive-date=(help). Retrieved 2011-09-18.She was a ‘homophobe’ and an ‘anti-Semite’, the site alleged, and such a disastrous journalist that the Catholic Herald had fired her. Her husband, Edward Lucas, went online to defend her reputation, but ‘David r from Meth Productions’ tried to stop him. Mr ‘r’ gave the same treatment to Francis Wheen, Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson after they had spats with Hari.
Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Template:Cite news
- ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Johann Hari (2011). "Johann Hari: A personal apology". Archived from the original on
|archive-url=requires|archive-date=(help). Retrieved 2011-09-18.So first, even though I stand by the articles which won the George Orwell Prize, I am returning it as an act of contrition for the errors I made elsewhere, in my interviews. But this isn’t much, since it has been reported that they are minded to take it away anyway. (I apologise to them for the time they’ve had to spend on this.) So second, I am going to take an unpaid leave of absence from The Independent until 2012, and at my own expense I will be undertaking a programme of journalism training.
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