Neil Harman - Plagiarist

Spectator · All-time great

RE: Neil Harman - Plagiarist

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

Can't help feeling that along the way Neil Harman trod on someone's toes and someone plotted to bring him down . I personally don't draw any satisfaction in witnessing the demise of any ones career . In the computer age with cut & paste it's easily done .

indiana · Tennis legend

Gary, what Neil was doing on such a scale he had to be very well aware of what he was routinely doing. I would expect anyone looking seriously into the evidence would conclude this.

It didn't need a "plot", he offered himself up, he committed the 'crime' year after year. One can debate how much he has and should suffer, but he was absolutely banged to rights.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Flatman totally missed the point, it wasn't even Ben that broke the Harman story anyway, and Neil assassinated himself.

Flatman's statement that he didn't understand the "nuance" of tagging was a total joke, he's been on twitter 5 years and uses it very frequently. He knew full well that if you @ someone in a tweet they can see it. And as Kevin Anderson's wife points out, they do see them, even if you think they are too highly ranked to be bothering with social media themselves, not that many will have a 'team' to deal with that in the way say Sharapova does.

And his comment was totally baseless anyway, Pliskova has had a brilliant 6 weeks and totally dismantled her ranking in an incredible fashion, lack of heart in big moments is certainly not an accusation you can levy her way!

Ben's posting of the DM was a bit immature but then the way he was spoken to by Barry was so pathetic and unprofessional and patronising I can see why he would have found it hard to resist. It just showed Flatman up more.

Sadly there is a huge old boys network feel to sports journalism in this country and many still think Neil did nothing wrong. As someone of the more modern generation who 'gets' social media it's not a big surprise most of the support from tennis fans is on Ben's side. Particularly given Flatman's long-standing position on being derogatory to womens' tennis.

-- Edited by PaulM on Tuesday 24th of February 2015 12:32:53 PM

philwrig · Hall of fame

I have to say I'm not a big fan of either of them.

Flatman in particular comes across as a sexist, lacking knowledge of the WTA, rude and very old fashioned.

Rothenberg used to be one of my favourites but the whistle blowing role he is now performing, dobbing in journalists from the same profession seems to me beyond his role, in other words he should just stay out of it. I think he's become too big for his boots, a bit too ****y and arrogant for my liking. I remember straight after the Harman story was made public, I tweeted him about a stat about how the Americans were performing at the US open, and just 2 minutes later a tweet came from him basically repeating exactly what I'd written. I thought well that's a bit hypocritical, on the one hand condemming Harman for plagiarising the Wimby annual book and not referencing other journalists, and then not giving me any credit for my stat by basically copying my tweet. I'm a big fan of Courtney Nguyen his partner in crime, she's wittier and stays out of other people's business.

As for Harman he deserved a hefty penalty for what he did, but at what stage has he been punished enough. Compared to Flatman he's a saint and I for one would prefer him to the aforementioned all day long, one of Andy M's biggest supporters and not a bad egg really I don't think. Mike Dickson is another who I've actually had some interaction with and never warmed to.

RJA · Hall of fame

philwrig wrote:
As for Harman he deserved a hefty penalty for what he did, but at what stage has he been punished enough. Compared to Flatman he's a saint and I for one would prefer him to the aforementioned all day long, one of Andy M's biggest supporters and not a bad egg really I don't think. Mike Dickson is another who I've actually had some interaction with and never warmed to.

Sorry but there is no way back for the old fraud. For a supposedly serious journalist reputation is everything and his reputation is permanently trashed.

JonH · All-time great

I saw a bit of a ding dong on line about Jake Humphrey using someone elses tweeted stats in a very mildly reworded tweet of his own and then getting called out for plagiarising the original tweet by Stuart Fraser among others Poor show from Humphrey who appears to have form

mobile.twitter.com/sportingintel/status/1103084188494954496

https://mobile.twitter.com/stu_fraser

Anyway, that aside, it made me wonder about Neil Harman - anyone know what he does these days, presumably he isnt involved in tennis at all? I used to like his writing, sad he threw it all away. But presumably he is doing some sort of work these days, presumably just not mainstream media?

-- Edited by JonH on Wednesday 6th of March 2019 05:30:29 PM

Shhh · Challenger level

As I remember Neil posted on here a few times. Old Echo Man he was known as (he started out on Southends Evenings Echo). He seemed a very decent bloke (and I am sure is) but had a fall from grace as we know and you're right Jon, disappeared from sight.

EddietheEagle · County player

He's an active enough Tweeter on which he's expressed his deep desire to return as a fully-functioning member of the fouth estate.

goldfish · Futures qualifying

From his Twitter description|

'Author: Gambling for Life with Harry Findlay, 2017. Media consultant'

indiana · Tennis legend

How to gamble on plagiarising and not get away with it...

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Here is an interview by Soto Tennis with Neil Harman giving his side of the story. I haven't listened to it all as it is 90 mins long.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/control-the-controllables/id1511047964

Edit

The issue of plagiarism starts at the 1 hr 4 minute mark.

To sum it up in a nutshell, he accepts he made mistakes but says that it was in error and not intentional. Basically down to time pressure he missed some accreditations of other people.

-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Sunday 9th of August 2020 06:56:01 PM