Zakaria suspended for plagiarism

Apologises for terrible mistake; Time,CNN take action; Post to review his work

Time magazine and CNN suspended Fareed Zakaria,the writer and television host,Friday after he apologised for plagiarising a New Yorker article in his column on gun control in the August 20 issue of Time.

Some passages in Zakarias column,The Case for Gun Control, closely tracked those in an article on guns in America by historian Jill Lepore in the April 23 issue of

The New Yorker.

The similarities in the texts were spotted by the conservative website NewsBusters,and quickly spread across the Internet after appearing on media blog JimRomenesko.com.

Zakaria issued a statement saying: Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepores essay8230; They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologise unreservedly to her,to my editors at Time,and to my readers.

His admission is the second instance in less than two weeks of a prominent writer owning up to an ethical lapse. Last week,Jonah Lehrer admitted he fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan for his best-selling book Imagine: How Creativity Works.

Time said it was suspending Zakarias column for a month,pending review. Time accepts Fareeds apology,but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists,which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well, said Ali Zelenko,a spokeswoman.

CNN,like Time magazine,is owned by Time Warner.

In a statement,CNN said: We have reviewed Fareed Zakarias Time column. He wrote a blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review.

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Zakaria,48,works for multiple media properties. He is a CNN host,editor at large at Time,a Washington Post columnist and an author. He was born in India and graduated from Harvard and Yale.

Fred Hiatt,the Washington Posts editorial page editor,said he also would examine Zakarias work: Fareed Zakaria is a valued contributor8230; Given his acknowledgment today,we intend to review his work with him.

Passage Zakaria lifted from Lepore

Fareed 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.

Jill 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.