CNN and Time Suspend Liberal Journalist Fareed Zakaria After Admission of Plagiarism

This guy is a noted Obama defender and apologist. Funny how it's almost always liberal writers who get caught plagiarizing:

Time magazine and CNN suspended Fareed Zakaria, the writer and television host, on Friday after he apologized for plagiarizing sections of his column on gun control in the Aug. 20 issue of Time.

Some passages in the column, “The Case for Gun Control,” closely tracked those in a longer article on guns in America by the historian Jill Lepore, which appeared in the April 23 issue of The New Yorker.

The similarities in the texts were spotted by the conservative Web site NewsBusters, and quickly spread across the Internet after appearing on the media blog JimRomenesko.com.

Mr. Zakaria issued a statement Friday afternoon saying: “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.”

His admission is the second instance in less than two weeks of a prominent writer owning up to an ethical lapse. Last week, the science writer Jonah Lehrer admitted that he fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan for his best-selling book “Imagine: How Creativity Works.” Mr. Lehrer was forced to resign as a staff writer for The New Yorker, and his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said it would recall print copies of the book.

Time said it was suspending Mr. Zakaria’s column for a month, pending review. “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,” said Ali Zelenko, a spokeswoman for the magazine.

CNN, like Time magazine, is owned by Time Warner.

In a statement, CNN said: “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.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Zakaria was criticized for giving a commencement speech at Harvard that was very similar to the one he had earlier given at Duke.

Mr. Zakaria, 48, balances a demanding schedule, doing work for multiple media properties. He is a CNN host, an editor at large at Time, a Washington Post columnist and an author. He was born in India and graduated from Harvard and Yale.

Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, said he also would start examining Mr. Zakaria’s work: “Fareed Zakaria is a valued contributor. We’ve never had any reason to doubt the integrity of his work for us. Given his acknowledgment today, we intend to review his work with him.”

The following passages provide an example of the repetition of Ms. Lepore’s work in Mr. Zakaria’s column:

Mr. Zakaria:

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.”

Ms. Lepore:

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.”

Fareed Zakaria: ‘Liberals Need To Grow Up’ And Realize The Limits Of Obama’s Rhetoric

Speaking of hypocrites:

Hey, Fareed, so’s yer face!


On his GPS program Sunday morning, Fareed Zakaria told viewers that he thinks “liberals need to grow up” and realize that President Obama’s oratorical gifts have their limits. The declaration has earned him sharp rebuke among liberals, but also from conservative sites like Newsbusters, each of whom see Zakaria’s premise at odds with reality.


Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard points out that there has been plenty of air and ink devoted to the idea that the S&P downgrade is the fault of the Tea Party and the Republicans, which is true, then chides Zakaria for complaining about liberals doing what people like Zakaria have trained them to do:


Maybe this “recurring liberal fantasy” was fostered by folks like Zakaria that presented Barack Obama to the American people as a messiah. If the public has a Hollywood-like view of this president, it’s because the media put him on a pedestal like nobody before him.


It’s true that liberals have been too hard on President Obama at times, but not out of some magical belief in his powers. Many were disappointed that health care reform didn’t include a public option, or that the President didn’t pass a larger, less tax cut-heavy stimulus package, when he had control of both houses of Congress. A lot of us blamed weak “conservadems” for undercutting stronger measures, but as President of the United States, Barack Obama should have been able to heel those blue dogs.

Bernie Goldberg Upset With “Supposed Journalist” Fareed Zakaria

Mediaite.com:

The all-out war between Glenn Beck and George Soros to make Godwin’s Law an official scientifically-accepted principle continued this weekend on CNN, where the billionaire told Fareed Zakaria that Fox News’ “falsehoods” were similar to what succeeded in Weimar Germany. On tonight’s Factor, Bill O’Reilly tried to make sense of Soros’ continued escalation of the feud while regular guest Bernie Goldberg wondered why Zakaria allowed that language to begin with.


Once in a while, O’Reilly said by way of explanation, “Soros comes down from this plush boardroom, or his private jet lands somewhere near CNN headquarters,” and he gives an opinion. This was highly perplexing to O’Reilly, as he didn’t believe Soros was “changing anybody’s mind” by speaking out, nor was he making much business. Goldberg argued that Soros merely spoke out because he believed in what he said. “I think he honest to God believes every syllable of what he said,” he argued, but that, more problematic than Soros’ opinions was the fact that “it takes two to tango,” and “supposed journalist” Zakaria didn’t challenge his propositions on the “American fascist dictatorship” forwarded by Fox News– “Zakaria didn’t ask a single question.”


At this point O’Reilly and Goldberg’s comments flew past each other a good deal, as O’Reilly was fixated with the reasoning behind Soros’ behavior, while Zakaria was far more interesting to Goldberg. O’Reilly argued that many who used similar rhetoric on the right are “in business to do that” and “are making money doing it,” but Soros didn’t need that. “Aren’t there drugs you want to give out for free?” he asked of Soros. Goldberg’s reaction to this was merely that he spoke what he believed to be the truth and Soros, as a private citizen with little influence as a speaker in the media, was not nearly as important as Zakaria in this context. “Zakaria is supposedly a journalist,” Goldberg concluded, “and a journalist just doesn’t sit there like a bump on a log when someone is making crazy statements like that.”