Johann Hari: art vs reality

It is a commonplace that so many economists and sociologists are bad writers. The trouble that Johann Hari has gotten into suggests that there might be a reason for this.
Let’s be clear here. His crime is a minor (ish) one. Had he cited his lifted quotes along the lines of “as X said elsewhere”, there would be no scandal. As Tim points out, there are worse things he’s done.
So, why didn’t he do this?
He claims that he preferred “intellectual accuracy” to “reportorial accuracy.” I’m not sure this is the relevant distinction. Instead, the relevant distinction is between a tidy, slightly alternative reality that can be captured by fine writing on the one hand and the messy, ambiguous facts in front of us. Johann was, in effect, choosing the former; had he rightly attributed those quotes his pieces would have been more accurate but less elegant.
In this context, I fear Johann was misled by a common cultural meme - the idea that “truth” can be captured by fine writing and by art. This is not wrong in all contexts. Great novels and films  - works of fiction - can tell important truths.
This meme, though, runs into a problem. Very often, “truth” is messy. People don’t just umm and ahh but say things that are ambiguous, or that don’t truly capture what they really think. And even “hard facts” are subject to multiple interpretations or are only suggestive of some conculsion or other.
What do we do in such cases? Johann’s solution was to try to polish the turds of reality to create an elegant “intellectual accuracy“. The alternative was to acknowledge that people are often inarticulate and that their thoughts are scattered. This would have been inelegant, at best and useless at worst: what if he had written up his interview with Toni Negri along the lines: “I didn’t understand a word the guy said”? 
And this is why so many academics are bad writers. The crooked timber of reality doesn’t fit into the elegant box of fine writing. Something’s got to give. For academics, it’s the writing. For Johann, it was the crooked timber.
But Johann’s choice was not an idiosyncratic one, but quite common in journalism.
I don’t mean by this outright lies or the harmless removal of umms and aahs from quotes. I’m thinking of two other things.
One is the over-confidence of columnists generally. It’s a rare columnist who admits that there is conflicting or ambiguous data.
The other is a lack of awareness of statistical inference. How often do you read about confidence intervals or sampling errors even though these are central to any understanding of statistics? What you get in reporting of science and economics is, very often, a neat and tidy but - for that very reason - more or less misleading story.
And nor could it be otherwise. A full and accurate story, even if it were possible to write in a few hundred words, would be ugly and inconclusive. 
Journalism is, by necessity, a simplified, cleansed map of reality. The problem is that we sometimes mistake the map for the terrain.

Comments

[Mark Gullick]

"Great novels and films - works of fiction - can tell important truths."

I don't know if they can. I suspect they provide entertaining commentary to truths. The problem with the Hari/Bunting/Toynbee/Alibhai-Brown brigade is that they can't imagine themselves outside of their ideological comfort zone, can't abide too much reality. New Labour were really the first bunch to concoct reality via the media and feel relaxed about it, and now the leftish media - to paraphrase Nietzsche - can't see around its own corner. I agree with you completely; much journalism is appallingly written, dullard prose. It's a shame. Every time I flick through the Penguin collection of columnists [I forget its proper title] I wonder what happened to British journalism. Great post.

[Stephen]

Yeah but lets not forget the boy has , as it were , form on this one.

Claims about Noam Chomsky's views about the UK's military intervention in Sierra Leone brought forth a rebuttal from the linguist that included "his silly inventions -- which tell us a lot about him" and "The fact that he would resort to these idiotic fabrications tells us a lot about him"
http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=307:noam-chomsky-responds-to-johann-hari&catid=17:alerts-2003&Itemid=42

A piece years ago for the New Statesman about how drugs laws will have to change when his generation are running the country - because we are all drug taking party animals. Was hilariously debunked by Private Eye who gave accounts of desperate phone calls wherein he asked his friends what it was like to weel , you know , take drugs..

Another New Statesman piece about homophobia wherein Mr Hari broke down barriers by having sex with attractive skinheads and islamic fundamentalists - is difficult to refute - but didn't strike this reader as desperately plausible ...

[Shuggy]

Tim's post was good. I think he's making the point that Johann's cutting and pasting forms part of a more general pattern of sloppy journalism, which is often build on rather weak research. One would be inclined to be more tolerant but he took great exception to a certain blogger making a remark about him having a reputation for making things up - so much so, he got a lawyer and the offending post was taken down. But he *does* have a reputation for making things up and it seems now that this is at least partly justified. I like your art/reality point. It occurred to me when reading about this. Johann has written a couple of plays, I think? Maybe he should stick to that sort of thing because no-one is going to be able to believe his reportage anymore.

[Cahal]

You make a good point about the truth being messy and ambiguous, and I think if you look at the 3 best (or at least most influential) economics works: TWN, Capital and TGT, you will find that the authors appear troubled and are oftentimes ambiguous (although Adam Smith wrote with more clarity than the other two).

This leads me to believe that choosing truth over elegance doe snot impact your work negatively in the eyes of others, and may even do the opposite.

[Abdullah]

Agree with Shuggy about Tim's post. I believe Johann's degree is in PPE, the 'E' standing for 'Economics'. How can he be so sloppy? Is it a lack of education? Will Cameron, holder of the same degree, be the same?

By the way, Mark, I don't think misattribution or lack of attribution has anything to do with ideology - Bush's autobiog has plenty of nicked stuff - but if it makes you feel better to vent, vent away...

[Grace]

Interesting post!

[Jonny R]

I think Hari has little defence whatsoever, and it's much more simple. He's just a crap interviewer and has tried to embellish his interviews to give the impression that he has produced more interesting responses.

After-all if he was so concerned about helping his interviewees properly express themselves, why not just point this out to them in the interview; "do you mean blah blah as you said in your book, or has your position changed" etc etc. And, as plenty of people have also suggested, why not just actually point out where you get the quote from at the time?

Also, adding the "After saying this, he falls silent, and we stare at each other for a while. Then he says, in a quieter voice" is a bit creepy to me. This is all on purpose not a simple mistake. I mean, this is job, his profession. So, tough.

On another note, Mark, are you really saying right wing commentators are the only ones who can look 'outside of their ideological comfort zone'? If so, would you include mad Mel Philips and Richard Littletjohn in this enlightened group?!

[MJW]

Hari is a professional "opinionist" and has long since become a parody of himself with his repetitive and predictable whines. But that's what he's paid to produce so criticising him for being a bit of a fraud is pointless, better to simply say he simply got sloppy with his schtick and that is unprofessional.

[Keith]

On the other hand great historians often write brilliantly e.g. A.J.P. Taylor; with the statistics left to notes at the end with the graphs and tables. Hobsbawm too. Great descriptive prose and accuracy can go together. If you are good enough.