In writing a pro-gun control article Fareed Zakaria was caught lifting a paragraph from an essay Jill Lepore wrote for The New Yorker this past spring. He has been suspended from CNN and TIME for plagiarism of another writer’s material. NewsBusters caught the Oh, no! no-no…
Here’s something that suggests a lack of intelligence: plagiarism. Cam Edwards at NRANews.com suggested to me that Zakaria seemed to plagiarize a paragraph from an April article in The New Yorker magazine — with a modicum word-usage changes and interjections (Texas!) in an attempt to paper it over. Here’s a paragraph from his Time piece:
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.”
Compare that in its organization to this paragraph from a Jill Lepore New Yorker article from April:
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.”
[…]
Fareed Zakaria has apologized. If he liked what she had said, and felt it backed-up his piece, it would have been far less work to simply quote, site, and link to Jill Lepore … and less trouble, obviously. NewsBusters also lists other such journalistic infractions, and just plain laziness.
During the 2008 presidential campaign cycle Obama was seen fingering his place in a copy of Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World.”
Perhaps Zakaria’s books need a second look … for obvious reasons.
Comments are closed.