There are several things you accept when you decide to become a journalist. It’s by no means an easy path. You’ll probably have to work for free for some time. When you do get paid, it’s not likely to be massive amounts. These are all things constantly reiterated by veterans of the field and newbies alike.
One thing which maybe isn’t said as often but is probably just as important is this: when you screw up, it will come back to haunt you, especially in the digital age, where your work is available at the click of a button and can be dissected and researched in detail. Such is the case with Johann Hari, whose apology for his plagiarism was published in The Independent on Wednesday.
What really brought this whole scandal home for me was Hari’s ‘punishment’ – that is, to take an unpaid sabbatical from The Independent and spend it at a top journalism school with the promise of his old job back in a year’s time. In about two weeks’ time, I’ll be beginning the postgraduate course at Cardiff, putting Hari and I in eerily similar positions. Except, Hari has almost a decade of hands on journalism experience, and we’re not talking unpaid work experience. He’s been on the payroll of a major newspaper for years now, putting him completely at odds with those who’ll be studying with him at the University of Columbia.
While it’s not explicitly stated in his apology, I found it to be implied Hari made his mistakes (and let’s not forget, these weren’t one off mistakes) because he hadn’t undergone the kind of journalistic training I’m about to get at Cardiff. This may come from a person of relative inexperience compared to Hari’s, but how on earth can such a lengthy time working as a journalist not be sufficient to learn the basics? What Hari did was substitute rubbish quotes with something better said elsewhere, as though it were said to him rather than printed years before the interview. Anyone with rudimentary interviewing skills knows this isn’t recommended practice in the slightest, and if anyone else tried it, they’d be out long before they even had the chance to print a long-winded article about how sorry they are.
Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve made several mistakes even in my short time in student journalism and I’m likely to make a couple more along the way, but the key thing about mistakes is you learn from them. Had enterprising bloggers not spotted the similarities in Hari’s quotes to content published elsewhere, then I don’t think Hari ever would have learnt from his mistake and he made it perfectly clear when the scandal blew up he thought it wasn’t exactly that much to make a fuss about. The criticism was then labelled as “attacks” on Hari’s journalism, marking him clearly as a victim rather than the wrongdoer. At least Hari is now actively attempting to learn from his mistakes by heading back to school, in a sense.
Yet there’s a bit more to it than that. The real kick in the teeth, as some have put it, is the fact Hari will have a job at the end of his year of training at Columbia. Cardiff may have an excellent record where graduate employment is concerned, but I’m by no means guaranteed a job by this time next year and neither are the vast majority of my peers. Sure, Hari may be paying out of his own pocket, but what issue is this when he has a job to look forward to in 2012? Many people on the course have taken out Career Development Loans to pay their course fees and accommodation, and paying that back is no picnic when you’re without a job.
There are many journalistic crimes worse than those which Hari has committed, and he’s done well to actually face up to it in a very public manner. Regardless, the result of the entire case is a bitter pill for us wannabes to swallow.
