The Johann Hari plagiarism row highlights a number of weaknesses both of the current system of press self regulation and of the culture of British journalism.
By making things up and stealing other people’s work Hari committed one of the worst breaches of journalistic ethics there is. But when this row surfaced back in June it was not something which the Press Complaints Commission was able to tackle.

The PCC is basically a dispute-resolution surface – but here, no-one was making a complaint to the PCC. Bloggers like Brian Whelan had merely done some digging and found out that a lot of Hari’s work was not what it purported to be.

So new Independent editor Chris Blackhurst had to make up a response on the fly, commission an internal inquiry and then decide on his own resolution – to suspend Hari on unpaid leave and make him do some journalism training.