Time Suspends Fareed Zakaria’s Column for a Month for Plagiarism (Updated)

Fareed Zakaria, Time's editor-at-large and a CNN host, apparently lifted passages from the New Yorker and elsewhere in his latest column on gun control

Fareed Zakaria, the CNN host and Time editor-at-large, apologized on Friday for plagiarizing passages of his Aug. 20 column on gun control from the New Yorker.

Time said on Friday that it would suspend his column for a month while they review his work. 

Hours later, CNN — on which Zakaria hosts the foreign-affairs show "GPS" — issued a statement saying it suspended the journalist after finding similar "unattributed excerpts" in a post on his Global Public Square blog.

"That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review," CNN said in the statement.

"I made a terrible mistake," Zakaria said in a statement Friday afternoon. "It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize to [Lepore], to my editors at Time, and to my readers."

Sections of "The Case for Gun Control," his latest column in Time, appeared nearly identical to an April 23 article in the New Yorker by historian Jill Lepore.

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

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The conservative media watcher Newsbusters reported the similarities after receiving a tip from NRAnews.com, a National Rifle Association advocacy blog.

The Washington Post, where Zakaria has submitted numerous op-eds, said on Friday night that it plans to go through his work with him.

"Fareed Zakaria is a valued contributor. We've never had any reason to doubt the integrity of his work for us," editorial page editor Fred Hiatt said in a statement to TheWrap through a spokeswoman. "Given his acknowledgment today, we intend to review his work with him."

Zakaria drew criticism earlier this year after a commencement speech he delivered at Harvard apparently contained recycled material from one he gave earlier at Duke.

Earlier in the day, Time issued a statement saying the magazine planned to investigate the claims.

Zakaria's main paragraph in question reads:

"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 wrote this:

"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."

Zakaria, it seems, avoids the Oxford comma.

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