Is the Independent about to whitewash Johann Hari?

Wednesday, 7 September 2011

Is there any truth to the rumour that Andreas Whittam Smith has entered Johann Hari for a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship? Because that is the word that the supposedly impartial ex-Indie editor has used to describe the man he’s investigating.

Seriously, though: if he does think Hari a genius, that implies he hasn’t been reading his articles with an entirely unbiased eye. Your typical Hari piece is fluent enough, with the odd clever turn of phrase, but most of the prose is purple with synthetic outrage. The expression “painting by numbers” comes to mind.

And as for the vast crowd of talkative extras who populate Hari’s colour pieces, one wonders whether he has ever bumped into a random stranger who didn’t say something that slotted neatly into the script? (The same could be said of his young imitator, Laurie Penny.)

Now, apparently, he’s playing the mental health card for all it’s worth. Which raises the question: if the Independent‘s star columnist was so deluded by depression that he inhabited an alternative universe, shouldn’t Simon Kelner have noticed something was wrong?

Ironically, even Hari’s luxuriant accounts of his own depressive episodes don’t add up. You would have thought someone so fascinated by his own psychopathology would remember what drug he was taking, and in how strong a dose – but the details are all over the place.

Chris Blackhurst, take note: if the Whittam Smith report is anything less than comprehensive in its findings, then all the unpublished stories about Hari’s wrongdoings – some of them quite spectacular – will come to light. And it will take a very long time indeed for the Independent‘s reputation to recover. If it ever does.

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