CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is facing a growing list of plagiarism accusations with several recent examples coming from his CNN show.
On Tuesday, the site OurBad Media, which has released previous examples of alleged plagiarism by Zakaria, released more than 20 new examples. We’ve reached out to CNN multiple times about the new claims, but have not received an on-the-record comment. A spokesperson referred us to previous comments given during earlier claims of plagiarism.
The most recent example is a video compilation showing a clip from a 2011 episode of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” matched with a 2010 documentary called “Justice for Sergei.” The “GPS” segment uses footage from the 2010 documentary, with an upper left courtesy, but Zakaria’s narration is lifted, nearly word-for-word, from the documentary.
In another 2011 segment, Zakaria tracks a package on the lack of an operating government in Belgium. Parts of the wording in that story are identical to sections of a TIME article on the same subject. OurBad Media sites several other examples of Zakaria using similar wording or statistics without attribution.
Last month, Zakaria defended himself against OurBad Media’s plagiarism allegations, telling Politico, “these are all facts, not someone else’s writing or opinions or expressions,” adding that the allegations were for “cases in my writing where I have cited a statistic that also appeared somewhere else.” CNN defended him as well, telling TVNewser, “CNN has the highest confidence in the excellence and integrity of Fareed Zakaria’s work. In 2012, we conducted an extensive review of his original reporting for CNN, and beyond the initial incident for which he was suspended and apologized for, found nothing that violated our standards. In the years since we have found nothing that gives us cause for concern.”
Several allegations in this week’s new report occurred both before and since his 2012 suspension.
Earlier this week, Politico’s Dylan Byers spoke to two journalism ethics experts about the new allegations against the CNN host. “They came to the same conclusion I did: Fareed Zakaria plagiarized,” Byers writes. Inside Cable News goes one further criticizing CNN for trying to “duck and cover”: “CNN must respond and clear the air. What’s going on with Zakaria now directly threatens the network’s journalistic integrity.”