Johann Hari- Wiki Warrior

Nick Cohen writes about the Johann Hari scandal:

I learned that Johann Hari was a journalist who was better at attention-seeking than truth-telling when a small American journal asked me to reply to his review of What’s Left, a book of mine on the dark forces in liberal-left politics. I looked at it and was astonished. It was not that he disliked my ideas — he was entitled to disagree — but that he had attacked a book I had not written. He pretended that I believed the West had been right to support Saddam Hussein while he was gassing the Kurds when I had said the opposite. He made up stories about my parents, good people he had never met, to show me in a bad light.
.....
I thought no more about it until I looked at my entry on Wikipedia. As well as learning that I was a probable alcoholic, a hypocrite and a supporter of Sarah Palin, I noticed that all reviews of my work were missing except Hari’s effort. Far from saying that he had made wild allegations and I had responded by quoting from the book, a writer working under the pseudonym ‘David r from Meth Productions’
.....
I put Hari to the back of my mind again until Cristina Odone told me a strange story. She was deputy editor of the New Statesman during Hari’s time there and had the sense to doubt the reliability of his journalism. After she crossed him, vile accusations appeared on her Wikipedia page. She was a ‘homophobe’ and an ‘anti-Semite’, the site alleged, and such a disastrous journalist that the Catholic Herald had fired her. Her husband, Edward Lucas, went online to defend her reputation, but ‘David r from Meth Productions’ tried to stop him. Mr ‘r’ gave the same treatment to Francis Wheen, Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson after they had spats with Hari.

I noticed that a few years ago, the same identity also defended Hari in the comment sections of blogs which I can't link to because Harry's Place no longer archives its comments.  David r from Meth Productions happily has an IP address which turns out to be:

: 217.118.112.0/20

descr: Interoute Telecommunications (UK) Ltd

origin: AS8928

notify: hostmaster@interoute.net

mnt-by: INTEROUTE-MNTNR

changed: george@interoute.net 20040211

source: RIPE

person: Franc Tundidor

address: Independent News & Media

address: Independent House

address: 191 Marsh Wall

address: London

address: E14 9RS

address: UK

Meth Productions doesn't seem to actually produce anything except pro-Hari propaganda.

This is another reason why the naivity defence doesn't work for Hari- he is an extremely nasty individual who has gone to great lengths to smear and slander those with the integrity to point out his tendency to lie.

Via