Columnist and TV host Fareed Zakaria admits to copying parts of Lepore’s article

Again, a famous columnist admitted of copying someone else’s writings. FareedZakaria is a Washington Post columnist, TV host of CNN’s foreign affairs show GPS, as well as an editor-at-large at Time.

Mr. Zakaria has apologized for using several paragraphs in his column in Time magazine that were written by another writer saying that he made "a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault." As a result, his column has been suspended for a month.

In a separate statement, Time spokesman Ali Zelenko said the magazine accepts Zakaria's apology, but would suspend his column for one month "pending further review."

He stated: "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.

Media reporters noticed that passages in Zakaria's column about gun control that appeared in Time's issue 20 of August issue closely resembled paragraphs in an article written by Harvard University history professor Jill Lepore. Her assay was published in the April 2012 issue of The New Yorker magazine.

Zakaria's column "The Case for Gun Control" starts with a paragraph containing the following text: “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."

Jill Lenore's New Yorker "Battleground America" assay starts with: "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."

In his statement, Zakaria "unreservedly" apologized to Jill Lepore, the Time’s editors and his readers.

Was it enough? Obviously, since  both Time and CNN have reinstated Fareed Zakaria after conducting their plagiarism investigations, stating that it was "an unintentional error and an isolated incident". 

Yeah, sure, and I am a supermodel! 

(Image courtesy of TalkoftheTown)