Fareed Zakaria

"President Obama’s world view is rooted in American exceptionalism."

So astonishingly said Fareed Zakaria during the opening segment of his Fareed Zakaria GPS program to be aired on CNN Sunday (video follows with commentary):

The University of Oklahoma, like every higher education institution in the country, is opposed to plagiarism.  So why did the home of the Sooners invite admitted plagiarist Fareed Zakaria to deliver the class of 2013's commencement address after the CNN anchor and Time plagiarism scandal?

In a statement announcing Zakaria's selection, University of Oklahoma President David Boren insisted that, “Fareed Zakaria is truly an educator…he uses his forum through the public media to educate a worldwide audience about the important issues we all confront and how we can work together to meet them.”  Yes, he sure does, especially when he lifts other people’s work to convey his point of view.

Last summer, Zakaria lifted material from Jill Lepore of the New Yorker in his column about gun control almost verbatim. Here’s a paragraph from his Time piece:

On the eve of Sunday's Academy Awards presentation, former George W. Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden has made a strong statement about the hunt for Osama bin Laden film "Zero Dark Thirty."

In an interview to be aired on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday, Hayden said, "If you look at the movie, it was artistically true, not factually true. Artistically, it portrayed the CIA interrogation program, but factually it was overwrought and inaccurate" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN must be so proud!

On Sunday, the self-described most trusted name in news aired a thirteen minute interview with Global Warmingist-in-Chief Al Gore, and although the subject of the sale of Current TV was raised, host Fareed Zakaria didn't ask him one question about al Jazeera's connection to oil (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Despite CNN waging a crusade for gun control over the past month, and host Piers Morgan drawing attention with his incessant activism and bullying of his opponents on the gun issue, CNN’s own poll shows that support for some gun control measures has dropped over the past month.

CNN.com reported on its poll Wednesday: "According to the survey, 56% support a ban on semi-automatic guns, but that's down from 62% in a CNN poll taken in the days after the shooting at Sandy Hook. The same is true for a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips - 62% in December, down to 58% now - as well as a requirement for all gun owners to register their firearms with the local government - 78% last month, down to 69% now."

Piers Morgan isn't the only CNN host pushing a ban on semi-automatic guns. Fareed Zakaria hammered "anomalous" U.S. gun laws on Thursday afternoon and pointed to other countries for the strict gun control that America should strive for.

"And I think that Sandy Hook has been a huge turning point and there is a shift of consciousness. We are becoming more aware of just how anomalous the U.S. is," said the host of CNN's foreign affairs show Fareed Zakaria GPS. "So the real challenge here is going to be to take this shift in national consciousness and actually drive it through to make it a shift in policy." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Since the financial collapse in the fall of 2008, we've heard doom and gloomers claim that America's best days are behind her.

Not so said Bill Gates on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday who instead believes, "The digital revolution is just at the beginning" and that "we're going to surprise ourselves" with what we create in the coming decades (video follows with transcript and commentary):

No surprise here, but CNN's Fareed Zakaria cheered the states that legalized same-sex marriage and marijuana on his Sunday CNN show, lauding it "a picture of America at its best, edgy, experimental, open-minded and brilliantly diverse."

Zakaria also noted exit polls favoring amnesty for illegal immigrants. "I hesitate to build a grand narrative out of all this, but the trend seems to be towards individual freedom, self-expression, and dignity for all," gushed the liberal journalist once reportedly considered for a position in Obama's second-term cabinet. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

New reports (and denials) that the CIA told its members in Benghazi to stand down during the embassy attacks are nothing but "an argument for ideologues" and no election game-changer, sounded CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Friday.

"I think this is a highly politicized set of charges and countercharges," added Zakaria. This from the man who reportedly was considered for a post in Obama's next administration if he was re-elected. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Time magazine just e-mailed Newsbusters with an announcement: Fareed Zakaria's column will return early, in the September 7 issue. His offending plagiarism-soiled column appeared in the August 20 edition, so the one-month suspension became a one-week slap on the wrist. (Update: CNN also announced today that their suspension of Zakaria would end on Sunday, August 26.)

"We have completed a thorough review of each of Fareed Zakaria’s columns for TIME, and we are entirely satisfied that the language in question in his recent column was an unintentional error and an isolated incident for which he has apologized. We look forward to having Fareed's thoughtful and important voice back in the magazine with his next column in the issue that comes out on September 7."

The Washington Post really knows how to bury the lede. In a Tuesday story on how suspended CNN-Time journalist Fareed Zakaria is now under fire for stealing quotes without attribution in his book The Post-American World, media reporter Paul Farhi waited until the 13th and final paragraph to acknowledge that that the Post has joined CNN and Time in punishing Zakaria for his plagiarism.

“Zakaria also writes a separate column for The Washington Post. The newspaper said on Monday that his column will not appear this month,” he concluded. Zakaria lamented: "People are piling on with every grudge or vendetta" now that NewsBusters exposed him.

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN host Howard Kurtz lashed out at CNN’s own host Fareed Zakaria for committing plagiarism in a gun control article for Time magazine. Kurtz gave credit to us: “A conservative watchdog site Newsbusters, acting on a tip from the NRA, broke the story that Fareed's column was not entirely his own work.”

Kurtz put the two passages side by side on the screen to underline Zakaria’s copycat routine and pounded Zakaria for committing a “cardinal journalistic sin,” and the “latest case study of an insidious journalistic disease.” It’s too bad journalists aren’t this upset about sloppy bias. (Video and transcript below)

[UPDATED below page break: TIME magazine, CNN have suspended Zakaria.] When CNN host and Time editor-at-large Fareed Zakaria wrote a new piece called “The Case for Gun Control,” it ended with a bang: “So when people throw up their hands and say we can't do anything about guns, tell them they're being un-American--and unintelligent.”

Here’s something that suggests a lack of intelligence: plagiarism. Cam Edwards at NRANews.com suggested to me that Zakaria seemed to plagiarize a paragraph from an April article in The New Yorker magazine -- with a modicum word-usage changes and interjections (Texas!) in an attempt to paper it over. Here’s a paragraph from his Time piece:

UC Berkeley professor Richard Muller has become a media darling now that he believes in global warming as a result of a study he led on the subject funded by the Koch brothers.

With this in mind, CNN's Fareed Zakaria must have been shocked by what Muller told him Sunday after he asked his guest, "Were [the Kochs] disappointed by the results of your research or have they asked for their money back?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times economic columnist Paul Krugman made a statement Sunday about the looming end of the year tax hikes and spending cuts that is likely to raise some eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.

Appearing on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Krugman said, "If Obama’s reelected, I think that there’s a quite good chance that for a month or two we actually will go off the cliff" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Here’s a really scary thought: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wants to replace Ben Bernanke as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

The perilously liberal economist actually said this in a segment of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS to be aired Sunday (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

CNBC's Lawrence Kudlow on Sunday gave Fareed Zakaria a much-needed education on Barack Obama's energy policies.

When the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS claimed the president deserved credit for the coming "shale revolution," Kudlow smartly replied, "He's giving none of the permits...He's a green energy guy. He's a Solyndra guy and he completely missed the boat on all of that stuff" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Less than two weeks after Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker won his recall election, you wouldn't expect a prominent liberal media member to be coming down on public employee benefits.

Yet there was Time magazine's editor-at-large Fareed Zakaria publishing a rather shocking article Friday with the equally shocking headline "Why We Need Pension Reform":

Fareed Zakaria on Sunday actually asked former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel if the president should "run a campaign against a do-nothing Republican Congress."

Such actually transpired on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, a program hysterically presented by the so-called "Most Trusted Name In News" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Boxer Manny Pacquiao is one of the most beloved figures in his native country the Philippines.

During an interview to be aired on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday, the host asked him if "there is something wrong with somebody in the Philippines" making as much money as he does "when people are starving" in his country (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fareed Zakaria on Sunday blamed the Tea Party for the "extraordinary polarization in Washington today."

"It's ideologically extreme, refuses to compromise, and cares more about purity than problem solving," Zakaria told viewers of the CNN program bearing his name (video follows with transcript and commentary):