The August issue of Attitude has just come out.
Its star columnist, Johann Hari - who's normally bigged-up on the cover - is noticable by his absence.
Editor Matthew Todd had been - quite nobley, I think - defending Hari on Twitter.
But it's come out that
Todd is one of the many journalists that Hari has nicked quotes from, so I'm not sure where they stand now (I have asked).
Others have turned on Hari.
Posters like the one above have supposedly been put up
in the newsroom of The Independent - the paper has now suspended him for two months.
Some of the most serious allegations have come
from former colleagues at the New Statesman, where he worked prior to joining The Indy.
Further, there are
rumours that the reason why Hari was dropped both as a GQ contributor and as editor of Cambridge University's Varsity magazine was his journalistic flights of fancy.
Self-styled right-wing libertarian blogger Guido Fawkes has really been fanning the flames on this story - and some have argued that this is at heart a right-wing smear campaign.
This is clearly nonsense* - not least of which because Hari is hardly "left-wing".
Not only have most of the most damaging revelations come from New Statesman contributors, but arguably
the most sustained and long-running critique of Hari's journalism has come from the - excellent - left-wing website, Media Lens.
Here is Noam Chomsky on Hari's "lies", "total ignorance" and "subservience... to power".
Presciently, writing to Media Lens in 2003, Chomsky concludes by recommending that Johann Hari should "try the experiment of literacy instead of repeating gossip he's heard somewhere."
Many have remarked how ironic/fitting it is that this scandal has been unravelling in the shadow of Hackgate.
Like the phone hacking story, when it began it seemed to centre on quite minor transgressions - the odd borrowed quote or bit of "creative writing" aren't great crimes in the general scheme of things.
But as with Hackgate, every week seems to bring more damning evidence of serious and serial ethical failure.
About which we knew.
For one example;
Johann Hari invented Iraqis who were supposedly asking for the US/UK to invade [All links to Johann Hari's website/archive have now been deleted - which says much].
Fuck this lying cheerleader of death.
The latest issue of Private Eye contains
one of the most serious by far; a 2007 report from the Central African Republic so mendacious it "appalled" the charity that took him out there so much they complained to The Independent's editor.
And yet nothing was done.
Whatever next?
* It is worth noting though how many comments after Guido Fawkes posts show the most repugnant homophobia.
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