Fareed Zakaria Suspended From CNN For Plagiarism

Posted on August 12, 2012

Writer and television host Fareed Zakaria has been suspended by CNN and Time magazine after he admitted to plagiarism. Zakaria apologized for plagiarizing a New Yorker article about gun control written by historian Jill Lepore for The New Yorker.

The New York Times reports that the rest of Zakaria's work is now being examined. Zakaria issued this statement: "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."

Here are the paragraphs in question:

Here is the paragraph from the original New Yorker article by Jill 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."

Here is the paragraph from Fareed Zakaria's article which lacked an attribution to the original source:

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."

CNN issued this statement after reviewing Zakaria's column. They say he also wrote a blog post for CNN.com on the same issue and used "similar unattributed excerpts." CNN says, "That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review."

What a sad thing to happen -- Zakaria was well-respected before this happened.