The Biggest Aspidistra in the World

Truth will out. At least it will if you're a habitual liar; lies built upon lies are almost impossible to keep balanced forever. Like many habitual liars, Johann Hari spent months crafting new inventions in an attempt to escape the consequences of those he'd made before. Now he says he's truly sorry. But should we believe him?

In a situation like this, many people consider it churlish to withhold forgiveness in response to a proffered apology. There is a suggestion that those who refuse to engage must be revelling in some kind of malicious glee. It is of course possible that this is true of some, but I would counter that there can be an equal degree of self-interest in rushing to say that the apology is accepted, that everything is alright now. It makes us feel magnanimous, but it isn't necessarily an honest or a wise response.

The real problem with forgiveness is that it is only a response; it cannot solve the underlying problem on its own. To mean anything, it has to be a response to genuine contrition, and contrition is not possible without a full understanding of what has been done wrong. Hari now says that he regrets altering Wikipedia pages to slander people he disliked because he would have been sad if they had done that to him. Not because, you know, it's wrong, never mind that it's professionally unacceptable. This is certainly an improvement on denying that he ever made those alterations, but it falls considerably short of the level of moral understanding required of a journalist who frequently focuses on the moral responsibilities of others. If Hari cannot improve on this, it doesn't matter whether or not his fans still believe in him – he simply will not have the authority to speak as he wishes to.

So what are Hari's options? Journalism school is a good start. There's no doubt he's already a good writer, but one hopes that he might learn something about ethics – or at least how to craft a more believable story next time he falls prey to temptation. The usual approach to moral gaffes like this is to disappear for a few years and then return as a reformed character, Portillo-like, complete with a book full of painful confessions emphasising one's noble sense of guilt. The journalist becomes the story, his abuses the sensation – and, of course, he still profits, though if he's smart and wants long term success he'll make a hefty donation to charity. Hari is a good candidate for this, because he's young and because he can produce elegant prose. But that opens up another question – why does he want to return to journalism at all?

I cannot be the only person to have observed that Hari's real success has been as a writer of fiction. The problem was that he was passing it off as fact. If he ceased to pepper it with pieces of other people's work (something editors will be very wary of in future) and if he constrained his cruel characters to speaking within the confines of a novel, he might give us something truly compelling. Hari's tragedy (such as it is) centres no on his fall from grace but on his failure, from the outset, to speak with his own voice. By hiding behind pilfered material he has belittled his own talent. His challenge, now, must be to show us what he is capable of.

The return of an Orwell prize already destined to be taken from him is a poor gesture on Hari's part. Journalism is about more than good writing – it is about social awareness, honesty, and a certain fastidiousness, at none of which Hari excels. His pursuit of it at this stage suggests a childish desire to be a somebody rather than the intelligent realisation of his talents. If he really wants to be taken seriously again, he needs to take a different path.

Why Press?

Every now and again a news story breaks whose connotations are so obvious to those working in the media that we forget our duty to explain them to other people. The News International scandal, which today saw the demise of 168 year old newspaper The News Of The World, is such a story. It has flooded television news and slowed down the internet, bewildering those who think of it, ultimately, as just an unfortunate tale of privacy intrusion.

I have talked with a number of people who have been upset that this story is getting so much coverage when other important matters aren't. I quite agree with them that issues such as the mass rapes and murders in Sudan, the catastrophic violence against women in Nicaragua and the pogroms against LGBT people in Iraq are more shocking, more disturbing. I agree that such matters deserve extensive coverage. But that is precisely why I consider it vital that the News International story stay in the headlines now.

As this scandal has encouraged opportunistic politicians to talk about state regulation of the press (as if regulation by a neutral independent body were not even a possibility), it has set up the false dichotomy of a state controlled press (certainly an unpleasant prospect) versus a 'free press'. The truth is that there can be no such thing as a free press if our major newspapers and broadcasting companies are owned by a tiny handful of people. Corporate influence is no more bound to be politically neutral than government influence. The vast majority of journalists (assuming they want to be paid) don't get to write about what they want. Even section editors have limited control where powerful editors-in-chief and owners are involved. They are told what to cover. They are told what constitutes the news.

This situation no longer represents the fait accompli that it once did. The internet means that people now have access to many more sources of news. Yet the fact is that only a small proportion of them actually take advantage of this. Many millions more still depend on red top newspapers as one of their principal sources of news. Research suggests that they are increasingly cynical about this news , yet it still shapes their world view - and, perhaps most importantly of all, it delineates what they are unaware of.

Without a balanced picture of what is going on around the world, it is difficult for people to understand major political issues like how we get involved in wars, why terrorist threats occur (and how seriously we should take them), and why people seek asylum here. But it's not only in their filtering of world news that the red tops routinely distort the political landscape. Heavily biased social and sometimes party political agendas distort their coverage of what goes on in the UK. They can bring down governments - witness their unrelenting attacks on Gordon Brown - or they can connive with governments they like to keep challenging ideas off the agenda.

Why would they do this? There are two reasons. First, perhaps most importantly, they have a self-perpetuating agenda. In order to get away with behaviour like that we have seen from the news of the World, they have to minimise government interference. In order to maximise profits, they have to keep their tax situations comfortable. And so forth. When a political party depends on you to stay in power, this is relatively easy to arrange. Secondly, there is power for its own sake. Many people crave it. When they have it, they want to use it, to shape society as they see fit. See, for example, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, who has a moral agenda that includes the denigration of LGBT people. This is the reason why we saw yesterday's peculiar attack on soap operas by Brian Sewell, clearly out of step with how the majority of the paper's readers actually feel.

Of course, we all like to feel that we are not influenced by this sort of thing. If we are good liberal types we may like to believe that other people are more sophisticated that we give them credit for, too. That's fair enough, but there are complicating factors. Most people outside media related professions don't really have much time to consult a variety of news sources, nor even to research particular stories they distrust. Furthermore, people are influenced in all sorts of subtle ways by the views of those around them, and if those views have been shaped by politically biased newspapers, those papers will still be able to advance their agenda.

If you ask people who actually work in journalism, you'll find that most - including those who work for red tops - agree that there are really important stories that don't get the coverage they deserve. Many will also agree that those stories can be written so as to interest the public, even if they are about places that are far away or with which those readers have no personal connection. Part of the art of writing news, after all, is to make readers feel they have a personal connection. So it would be perfectly possible to run a news organisation that carried stories like this. The reason it doesn't happen is that it simply doesn't interest those with established financial and political power bases.

To change the media is to change society. There is no more profound cultural influence, and cultural change lies at the base of every major political and economic change. The media, more than anything else, is where power lies in the modern world. This is why we cannot tolerate corruption and abuse within it; why we cannot risk letting monopolies form; why we must promote the representation of a diverse range of viewpoints. This is why the battle for justice at News International must go on. If we fail, most of us will never hear about the other things that matter in the first place.