Time magazine will review Fareed Zakaria’s work after Twitter users @blippoblappo and @crushingbort accused the CNN journalist of lifting from a variety of publications, including Vanity Fair, Businessweek and the New Yorker.
Time magazine “takes the accusations seriously,” according to a statement from Daniel Kile, vice president of communications for Time Inc.:
In 2012, we conducted a review of Zakaria’s work for TIME and were satisfied with the results of that investigation. We will be reviewing these new allegations carefully.
Zakaria is the host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” a columnist for the Washington Post and was recently named a contributor to Atlantic Media. He was previously an editor-at-large for Time magazine.
Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, called the new accusations “reckless” in a statement to Poynter:
“If I’m not mistaken, the newest allegations feature only one WP column, and when I looked at that I thought it was so far from a case of plagiarism that it made me question the entire enterprise. Take a look. Fareed uses some budgetary information that is also cited in a Center for American Progress report.”
The Post intends to keep Zakaria as a contributor and will not be conducting another review of his work, said Kristine Coratti, the paper’s director of communications.
The fresh allegations of plagiarism, which were posted to the blog “Our Bad Media,” unearthed 12 instances where some of Zakaria’s work closely resembles the work of others. Here are a few of the articles flagged in the post:
- In an article published in October 2011, Zakaria used language that was near verbatim to language in a story by David Leonhardt published in the New York Times in February of that year.
- In an August 2011 column for The Washington Post, Zakaria used an anecdote that appeared nearly two years earlier in a New Yorker article from George Packer.
- A line in an August 2011 Time magazine article by Zakaria was exactly the same as a line from a Peter Beinart article published in Time in 2010.
In addition to Time magazine, The Washington Post and CNN both conducted reviews of Zakaria’s work in 2012. All publications cleared him of further wrongdoing and reinstated him; Time magazine spokeswoman Ali Zelenko called the incident an “unintentional error,” and CNN said their review found “nothing that merited continuing his suspension.”
Related: Fareed Zakaria: ‘People are piling on with every grudge or vendetta’ | Fareed Zakaria says many journalists don’t attribute quotations | Fareed Zakaria suspended from Time, CNN for plagiarizing New Yorker story
