Time, CNN suspend Fareed Zakaria for plagiarism

MANILA, Philippines – Renowned foreign affairs journalist Fareed Zakaria has been suspended for plagiarism.

Time Magazine and CNN suspended Zakaria on Friday, August 10, after he apologized for plagiarizing sections of his column on gun control in Time’s August 20 issue, the New York Times reported.

Zakaria’s apology comes after conservative websites and media blogs spotted similar passages in his column titled “The Case for Gun Control” and an article on guns in America by historian Jill Lepore in the April 23 issue of The New Yorker.

Zakaria wrote a shorter version of the story for his blog on CNN.com.

“Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore’s essay in the April 23 issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers,” Zakaria said in a statement.  

Time announced that it is suspending Zakaria’s column for a month while CNN is suspending him for an unspecified period. Zakaria is Time’s contributing editor at large and host of CNN’s weekly foreign affairs show Fareed Zakaria GPS.

“Time accepts Fareed’s apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well. As a result, we are suspending Fareed’s column for a month, pending further review, said Time spokeswoman Ali Zelenko.

CNN said it is also reviewing the incident.

“We have reviewed Fareed Zakaria’s Time column, for which he has apologized. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review.”

Zakaria, 48, is well-known as a foreign affairs expert in US media. Born in India, he studied in Yale and got his PhD in political science from Harvard University.

He used to be managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and a columnist for Newsweek. Aside from his current work in Time and CNN, Zakaria is also a Washington Post columnist, a New York Times bestselling book author, and a foreign affairs resource speaker.

Fareed, US media and Yale

Zakaria is just one of many journalists who has been accused of plagiarism.

Recently, popular science writer Jonah Lehrer resigned from The New Yorker after admitting that he fabricated quotes from Boby Dylan for the book Imagine. The book has been withdrawn from sale by his publisher.

The Guardian reported that Lehrer was earlier accused of “self-plagiarism” in some of his columns. 

It might not just be Zakaria’s journalism career that will be affected. The Huffington Post reported that the plagiarism episode might impact on his academic ties.

“Zakaria is a trustee of Yale, which takes a very dim view of plagiarism and suspends or expels students who commit anything like what he has committed here. If the Yale Corporation were to apply to itself the standards it expects its faculty and students to meet, Zakaria would have to take a leave or resign,” wrote the Huffington Post.

Similar texts

Below are some of the similarities between Zakaria’s column and the Lepore article on New Yorker, as provided by the New York Times: 

Zakaria’s Time column:

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.

Lepore’s New Yorker piece:

As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.”

 

The Atlantic Wire noted other similar passages between the two stories. 

Earlier this year, Zakaria was also accused of recycling a commencement speech at Harvard, which was similar to a previous one he gave at Duke. – Rappler.com