Time magazine’s Fareed Zakaria, host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN, was called out today for plagiarism by Newsbusters’ Tim Graham.
From Zakaria’s piece in Time magazine:
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.”
As Graham noted, the above paragraph is a lazy imitation of a section from an April article by The New Yorker’s 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.”
This is not the first time Zakaria has been been embroiled in scandal. In 2009, Jeffrey Goldberg called out Zakaria for using a quote of his without attribution. Additionally, the Boston Globe noted in June that Zakaria had delivered uncomfortably similar commencement addresses to students at Duke and Harvard.
Zakaria’s embarrassment comes just over a week after Jonah Lehrer resigned from The New Yorker when it was revealed he fabricated Bob Dylan quotes in his latest book, “Imagine.”
This afternoon, Zakaria released a statement (published in the Atlantic Wire) apologizing for his behavior:
“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 23rd 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.”
TIME has now suspended Zakaria, according to press accounts.
Update: CNN has suspended Zakaria indefinitely, according to press reports.
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