Fresh allegations surface of Zakaria having plagiarized in the past.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: Eminent Indian American journalist Fareed Zakaria, who is the host of the popular Sunday CNN news program ‘GPS, a columnist for the Washington Post and an Editor-at-large of Time magazine, has been accused once again of plagiarism in his written work, two years after he confessed and apologized for making “a terrible mistake” over allegations of plagiarism and was suspended for a month by both Time and CNN.
Zakaria has now been accused by two anonymous bloggers who write on ‘Our Bad Media’, the same duo who had exposed BuzzFeed’s Benny Johnson for plagiarism last month, and eventually led him to be fired, reported The Huffington Post.
Two years ago, Newsbusters’ Tim Graham and NRANews’ Cam Edwards had highlighted one of Zakaria’s columns for Time that had lifted passages on gun control from a New Yorker article by Jill Lepore. They also noted that in 2009, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg had complained about Zakaria lifting quotes from his own interviews with notable subjects, without attribution. But after being suspended, Zakaria has made a strong comeback, and is now regarded as one of the best journalists in the country today.
But now two anonymous bloggers are saying that it was not just one incident of plagiarism. The pair highlighted 12 more instances that they allege point to plagiarism in Zakaria’s pieces — written before the 2012 scandal — on their blog, Our Bad Media. The findings contradict statements given previously by Time, The Washington Post and CNN, which said that Zakaria made an “unintentional error” and that the plagiarism was an “isolated incident,” said the Post.
“These examples raise far more serious questions about the integrity of Zakaria’s editors at CNN, TIME, and the Washington Post, all of whom claimed to have conducted similar reviews and found nothing,” the duo wrote. “In the light of our findings, we have to call bullshit. It took less than an hour and a few Google searches for us at Our Bad Media to find an example of lifting in Zakaria’s columns written before the 2012 plagiarism scandal.”
Time’s vice president of communications, Daniel Kile, told Talking Points Memo Tuesday that they do not take these claims lightly, reported the Post.
“While Fareed Zakaria is no longer employed by Time Inc., TIME takes these charges very seriously,” he wrote. “In 2012, we conducted a review of Zakaria’s work for TIME and were satisfied with the results of that investigation. We will be reviewing these new allegations carefully.”
Zakaria countered the new plagiarism charges in an email to Politico, arguing that all the instances Our Bad Media cites are “facts, not someone else’s writing or opinions or expressions”:
“My usual procedure with a piece of data that I encounter is to check it out, going as close to the original source as is possible… In many of these cases, there was a link in my column to the source. This was not always possible, however, because Time magazine, for example, did not always allow for links. My columns are often data-heavy, so I try to use common sense, putting a source into the text when it was necessary.”
Zakaria also noted, “In many of the columns cited by the bloggers, I found the data they refer to in a primary source not the secondary one that they highlight.”
CNN told Mediaite that they have the “highest confidence in the excellence and integrity of Fareed Zakaria’s work.”
The Washington Post’s editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, also responded to a request for comment from Talking Points Memo:
“If I’m not mistaken, the newest allegations feature only one WP column, and when I looked at that I thought it was so far from a case of plagiarism that it made me question the entire enterprise. Take a look. Fareed uses some budgetary information that is also cited in a Center for American Progress report. There’s no lifting of language, and I’m sure I could find the same data in a dozen other reports. I honestly think it is reckless even to suggest this is plagiarism.”
On their blog on wordpress, the two anonymous bloggers have detailed some instances they have found Zakaria lifting material from other writers without giving attribution, as well as his lifting ideas from other sources. They have also warned that they will be publishing other instances of Zakaria, who is a Peabody winner for CNN, having plagiarized in the past.