Is Everyone Acting Like an Ethically Challenged Rat? — Fareed Zakaria’s Time Magazine and CNN Suspensions for Too-Closely Copying another Person’s Paragraphs

© 2012 Peter Free

 

10 August 2012

 

 

Citations — to the news reports that this essay is about

 

Frazier Moore, Zakaria suspended for copying other writer's work, Associated Press via Yahoo.com (10 August 2012)

 

Christine Haughney, Time Magazine Suspends Fareed Zakaria a Month Over Plagiarized Parts of Column, New York Times (10 August 2012)

 

 

Who is Fareed Zakaria, and why do we care?

 

According to Wikipedia, Fareed Zakaria was born in Mumbai (India) and is a graduate of Yale (BA) and Yale (PhD).

 

He is an editor at large for Time magazine.  And he has his own (generally quite intelligent) CNN television show.  Formerly, he had been with Foreign Affairs and Newsweek.

 

All of these are prestigious jobs.  In short, Mr. Zakaria had everything going for him.

 

But, apparently — just like so many American leaders, moguls, and celebrities — he turns out not to have been particularly honest or ethical.  At least in this instance.

 

 

Has this formerly admirable man been (at least temporarily) done in by an inexplicable laxity of ethical conduct?

 

From the Associated Press:

 

Columnist and TV host Fareed Zakaria has apologized for lifting several paragraphs by another writer for use in his column in Time magazine. His column has been suspended for a month.

 

Zakaria said in a statement Friday he made "a terrible mistake," adding, "It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault."

 

© 2012 Frazier Moore, Zakaria suspended for copying other writer's work, Associated Press via Yahoo.com (10 August 2012)

 

 

What Mr. Zakaria did

 

From Christine Haughney at the New York Times:

 

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.”

 

© 2012 Christine Haughney, Time Magazine Suspends Fareed Zakaria a Month Over Plagiarized Parts of Column, New York Times (10 August 2012)

 

 

What the -----?!

 

Reading these two paragraphs indicates that Zakaria saved himself time and creative thinking by, in effect, copying someone else’s analysis and thought order.

 

Though this might sound like a trivial offense to non-writers, authors slave over exactly those processes.  That is what copyrights are indicated to protect.  It is not writers’ conclusions that are protected — it is the pattern and words with which those are reached.

 

Although Zakaria could mount a defense to accusations of plagiarism (in its legal sense), it is ethically clear that he copied someone else’s work, ostensibly to lessen his own writing load.

 

 

Immediate consequences

 

According to the Associated Press and the New York Times, Time magazine has already suspended Zakaria.  Haughney’s article indicates that CNN is going to.

 

 

The moral? — Everywhere we turn, rats seem to be in charge

 

The Zakaria story is simply one more instance of bad behavior on a prominent American’s part.

 

We seem to be living in a contagious swamp of inescapable ethical malaise.  This metaphorically slimy fog has infiltrated all of politics, much of business, and cut wide swaths through ordinary Americans’ behavior.

 

I am beginning to think that success (in its accepted American sense) rewards, and perhaps requires, ethical misconduct.

 

Fareed Zakaria will, no doubt, be back.  After he receives our society’s purely ritualistic tap on the wrist.