Fareed Zakaria Made Attribution Mistakes On CNN Show But No Plagiarism, CNN Reports


Did Fareed Zakaria commit plagiarism or not? That was the question on this morning’s Reliable Sources, and CNN host Brian Stelter, a former New York Times media reporter and the founder of industry blog TV Newser, said his fellow CNN host had not quite committed plagiarism, but instead made mistakes regarding attribution.

According to TV Newser, Stelter dug into the nitty gritty details of allegations made on the blog Our Bad Media.

In the OBM post, the authors allege that there were about 12 different instances of Fareed Zakaria’s plagiarism, and said the Peabody Award-winning news anchor, author, and columnist cannot chock the mistakes up to simple errors in attribution.

“Fareed Zakaria is not a twenty-something digital media blogger charged with putting together Jurassic Park listicles. Fareed Zakaria is a news editor and a New York Times bestselling author who holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard. In other words, someone who should be more than familiar with proper citation by now. The above examples are from a span of less than two years and do not include his work since, his columns at Newsweek from 2001-2010, or the books he wrote before 2012.”

For those of you who do not remember, Fareed Zakaria’s plagiarism charges this year are not the first, as alluded to by OBM. Plagiarism charges were previously leveled against Zakaria in 2012. As The Inquisitr noted in an August 2012 article, Zakaria issued an apology for the lapses in judgment and ethics.

In the most recent charges, TV Newser reports that Stelter attempted to interview Zakaria about the allegations, but was turned down by the Ivy League-educated CNN host.

Even though Zakaria would not grant his colleague an interview, Stelter still conducted his research of the allegations made against Zakaria by Our Bad Media, and issued the following statement regarding Zakaria’s purported lapses in judgment.

“My reporting leads me to believe that Zakaria’s program made some attribution mistakes, a small number, to be fair…. They are the kind of mistakes that other journalists can learn from, and viewers too.”

TV Newser also reported that CNN issued the following statement to the media criticism show Stelter hosts, and had the following to say.

“CNN has the highest confidence in the excellence and integrity of Fareed Zakaria’s work. We have found nothing that gives us cause for concern.”

[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]

Share this article: Fareed Zakaria Made Attribution Mistakes On CNN Show But No Plagiarism, CNN Reports
More from Inquisitr