Nasa scientist refutes Hari’s prize-winning article, media awards drag their feet
As revelations emerged about legal threats received by the Orwell Prize from lawyers at the Independent last week I made an unpopular statement about how nobody would want to win the prize again.
How could anyone want to win this award when it allowed Johann Hari’s bad journalism to go unnoticed? Well, it could be worse, the Orwell Prize have spent weeks working to investigate and correct their error, leaving other media awards conspicuous by their silence.
Hari isn’t just a former winner of the Orwell Prize, he has received quite a few awards over the years and after taking a look through the list, it looks like he might even be able to hang on to some of them. Some, not all.
In 2010 Press Gazette awarded Hari story of the year in the Environmental Press Awards for his work on Bangladesh. I contacted Dominic Ponsford, editor of PG, to ask if they had considered checking Hari’s work.
He explained; “When Press Gazette was sold by Wilmington in June 2009, they insisted on retaining the rights to all the awards which we used to run - including the Environmental Press Awards”
“On memory, Hari was awarded the prize for a piece which he wrote Bangladesh being at risk from flooding. And as far as I know, no questions have been raised over this piece so
“I don’t think stripping Hari of this award is an issue.”
The Bangladesh piece was sold on the back of a claim that the area would be buried under 25metres of water, a claim credited to Nasa scientist Jim Hanson - I spoke to Jim last week and he confirmed that he had not said that.
He explained to me; “The last time that Earth was 1-2C warmer than today, in the early Pliocene, sea level was about 25 meters higher than today. So that is where we are headed if we follow business-as-usual or even the European target.“However, this could not happen this century. I have talked about “multi-meter” sea level rise this century, which means at least 2 meters. Indeed, if we were so foolish as to follow business-as-usual, I believe that 5 meter sea level rise is likely within ~ 1 century, i.e, it may occur before 2100.
“But the rate of sea level rise is a very difficult non-linear problem. It is more likely to be non-linear, better approximated as exponential than linear.”
Not dishonest journalism, perhaps, but certainly shoddy work and not award winning. Climate change is a serious issue, its important to get figures right. Dominic now says he will take a close look at the article.
“At present we have no plans to strip him of the prize. But I will now take a close look at the piece.”
Next stop the Comment Awards, where Hari has taken away both Cultural Commentator of the Year and Environmental Commentator of the year.
They say that they have “obviously talked about it and concluded that as his award was for comment rather than reporting or reportage then we would leave things as they were.”
I am not aware of which pieces he submitted and as such have no rebuttal. Although I hope his disputed version of events at the Copenhagen summit wasn’t involved.
Next up Amnesty International who awarded Hari Newspaper Journalist of the Year in 2007 and 2010.
Amnesty say “We are aware of the allegations being made about Johann Hari’s work and we are monitoring the situation closely.”
“The Independent is itself investigating some of these allegations and we will await the outcome of that in the first instance.”
I received no reply from the Marth Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, which Hari won in 2009. The award is for “factual journalism in English that exposes establishment propaganda.”. Funny then that one of the pieces Johann submitted was dubious “The dark side of Dubai”.
Andrew Gilligan received a reply from the Gellhorn Prize explaining they are waiting for the results of the Indy’s investigation. Why would they need to when the evidence is already there in black and white?
Telegraph:
A man interviewed by Johann Hari says the celebrated Left-wing writer “twisted,” “misquoted” and “misrepresented” his words in an article which won him a major journalism award.
Usman Raja, a counter-extremism expert for the Government’s “Prevent” initiative, was interviewed by Hari in 2009 for an article on those who have renounced extremism. He was described as a man who had “begged to become a suicide bomber” and quoted as calling himself a “papier-mâché Muslim.”
We still do not know whether the Indy will be publishing their findings or even sharing them with the people who, trusting the paper had checked the work, awarded Hari.
Given their aggressive attitude to the Orwell Prize it seems unlikely.
