Bloomsbury apologises for publishing inaccurate Jay Rayner claims

Bloomsbury has issued an apology after inaccurate claims about the journalist Jay Rayner were published in Johann Hari’s latest book, Magic Pill. The publisher also said it is in the process of correcting the title.

Taking to X (formerly known as Twitter), Rayner disputed a passage in which Hari claims he took the weight loss drug semaglutide. In the book, which Bloomsbury published on 2nd May, Hari had written: “But I suspect I am probably an exception and the response of food critic is Jay Rayner is more typical. He said that Ozempic robbed him of his pleasure in food so severely that even in restaurants in Paris he couldn’t find any joy.” 

In response to the passage, Rayner wrote: “I wrote one column on the subject in which I explained why I would NEVER take it. The piece is clear. I explained why I would not be using it. I didn’t say anything about Paris restaurants. This was completely checkable.  

“I am mystified as to why @BloomsburyBooks did not go through the text with a fine tooth-comb. The issue is that stuff like this ends up on the record.” 

Posting in response, Hari wrote: “I confused an article by Jay Rayner in the Guardian with an article by Leila [sic] Latif in the same paper talking about losing pleasure in food. I apologise to Jay for getting this wrong, & am gutted I & my fact-checkers missed it.” 

Rayner said on X that he accepted the apology but added: “I do however need to point out that the Latif column he refers to was also NOT about using semaglutide. I am now waiting for his publishers to tell me how they will rectify the error in all editions of the book.” 

Meanwhile Latif, a film critic and broadcaster, also confirmed she has never taken semaglutide and said on X that Hari is “misrepresenting a very personal piece of writing about a still difficult medical choice”.

Bloomsbury apologised to Rayner on X and a spokesperson told The Bookseller: “This is an unfortunate mistake which we are in the process of correcting across all editions. We confirm there was a fact checking process in place for Magic Pill by Johann Hari. The error occurred when an article was wrongly attributed to Jay Rayner and we sincerely apologise to him.” 

Posting on X, journalist Tom Whipple has also disputed the book’s accuracy, writing that Hari is "a little free and easy. Not only with unrebuttable speculations about future, as yet unknown side effects, but also with his citations". 

In 2011 Hari admitted to embellishment of quotations and plagiarism for his journalism at the Independent, and to using a pseudonym David Rose to attack his critics on Wikipedia.