Logo

CNN Suspends Journalist After He’s Caught Committing Plagiarism

Aug 13, 2012  •  Post A Comment

CNN suspended a journalist Friday after he admitted to plagiarizing a piece in the New Yorker about gun control for an article he wrote in Time magazine, reports The New York Times’ Media Decoder. The journalist is Fareed Zakaria.

The similarities in the texts were spotted by the blog NewsBusters, which wrote that it was tipped off by the NRANews.com about the two articles.

On Friday afternoon, Zakaria said in a 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.”

Time said it would suspend Zakaria’s column for a month, pending review, while CNN said it would also suspend him while it reviewed the matter. Both Time and CNN are owned by Time Warner.

Here is an example of the two texts:

Zakaria:

“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:

“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.’”

Your Comment

Email (will not be published)