Time magazine columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria has been suspended for plagiarism on Friday night, after a blog discovered similarities between his recent Time column on gun control and a New Yorker essay by Jill Lepore on the same topic.
Zakaria admitted to plagiarism in a statement where he himself labeled the deed a “terrible mistake.”
“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,” Zakaria wrote. “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.”
The 48-year-old journalist, who was born in India, became editor-at-large at Time in 2010. He is the host of CNN’s foreign affairs show GPS. Time magazine and CNN, both owned by Time Warner, decided to suspend Zakaria for the violation. His CNN suspension is indefinite while Time has suspended him for only a month, “pending further review.”
Conservative website NewsBusters was the first to break the story which rapidly spread across the internet.
Fareed Zakaria also writes for the Washington Post, which said they will be scrutinizing the fallen journalist’s work moving forward.
This is not the first time Zakaria has been accused of plagiarism. According to a Huffington Post report, he was accused by columnist Jeffrey Goldberg in 2009 for pulling quotes from his work without a citation.
