Johann Hari

In June 2011, bloggers at Deterritorial Support Group, as well as Yahoo! Ireland editor Brian Whelan, asserted that Hari had plagiarised material published in other interviews and writings by his interview subjects.[13][14][15] For example, a 2009 interview with Afghan women's rights activist Malalai Joya included quotations from her book Raising My Voice in a manner that made them appear as if spoken directly to Hari.[16] Hari initially denied any wrongdoing, stating that the unattributed quotes were for clarification and did not present someone else's thoughts as his own.[17][18] However, he later said that his behaviour was "completely wrong" and that "when I interviewed people, I often presented things that had been said to other journalists or had been written in books as if they had been said to me, which was not truthful".[19] Hari was suspended for two months from The Independent[20][2] and in January 2012, it was announced he was leaving the newspaper.[21]

The Media Standards Trust instructed the Council of the Orwell Prize, who had given their 2008 prize to Hari, to examine the allegations.[22][23] The Council concluded that "the article contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else's story" and did not meet the standards of Orwell Prize-winning journalism.[24][25] Hari returned the prize,[26] though he did not return the prize money of £2,000.[27] He later offered to repay the sum, but Political Quarterly, which had paid the prize money, instead invited him to make a donation to English PEN, of which George Orwell had been a member. Hari arranged with English PEN to make a donation equal to the value of the prize, to be paid in instalments when he returned to work at The Independent, but he did not return to work there.[28]

In addition to plagiarism, Hari was found to have fabricated elements of stories.[29] In one of the stories for which he won the Orwell Prize, he reported on atrocities in the Central African Republic, claiming that French soldiers told him that "Children would bring us the severed heads of their parents and scream for help, but our orders were not to help them." However, an NGO worker who translated for Hari said that the quotation was invented and that Hari exaggerated the extent of the devastation in the CAR.[30][31] In his apology after his plagiarism was exposed, Hari claimed that other staff of the NGO had supported his version of events.[32][33]

In an article about military robots, Hari falsely claimed that the former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was attacked by a factory robot and was nearly killed.[34][35][36] Hari falsely claimed that a large globe erected for the Copenhagen climate summit was "covered with corporate logos" for McDonald's and Carlsberg, with "the Coke brand ... stamped over Africa".[36] Private Eye's Hackwatch column also suggested that he pretended to have used the drug ecstasy and misrepresented a two-week package tour in Iraq as a one-month research visit, in order to bolster support for the Iraq war by claiming that Iraqi civilians he spoke to were in favour of an invasion.[37]

Hari's book about drugs, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs was published in 2015.[38][39] Hari also performed a TED Talk on the subject that same year. Hari claims that most addictions are functional responses to experiences and a lack of healthy supportive relationships, rather than a simple biological need for a particular substance.[40]

In January 2018, Hari's book Lost Connections, which deals with depression and anxiety, was published, with Hari citing his childhood issues, career crisis, and experiences with antidepressants and psychotherapy as fuelling his curiosity in the subject. Kirkus Reviews praised the book.[41]

In January 2022, Hari published a book called Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention, claiming that elements of modern lifestyles, including social media, are "destroying our ability to concentrate".[42] The book debuted at number seven on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending 12 February 2022.[43]