Fareed Zakaria, Council on Foreign Relations Member, Caught Plagiarizing

Fareed Zakaria is so used to spitting out Council on Foreign Relations propaganda that he must have forgotten that he can't regurgitate in the outside world things that he reads elsewhere in the outside world.

Zakaria is a member of the CFR and one of the few go to on air reporters that CFR members consider safe to be interviewed by. Charlie Rose is the only other television host that comes to mind.

But the topic of this post is not his willingness to throw  softball questions at the powers that be, but the fact that he is, apparently, a plagirist.

NYT has the details:

Some passages in Mr. Zakaria’s column, “The Case for Gun Control,” closely tracked those in a longer article on guns in America by the historian Jill Lepore in the April 23 issue of The New Yorker. Earlier this year, Mr. Zakaria was criticized for giving a commencement speech at Harvard that was very similar to the one he had earlier given at Duke.

An example of the repetition of Ms. Lepore’s work in Mr. Zakaria’s column follows:

Mr. 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.

Ms. 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.”

Zakaria is apologizing profusely:

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 enti

TIME magazine has suspended him.
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UPDATE: CNN now suspends. J Rubin tweets:
email from CNN. Fareed Zakaria suspended after a review of blog post on same issue w/similar unattributed excerpts.