Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria Begs 'Courage' From Lawmakers to Enact Gun Control
By Matt Hadro | January 10, 2013 | 5:01 PM EST

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."

Bill Gates: 'The Digital Revolution Is Just At The Beginning' - 'We're Going To Surprise Ourselves'
By Noel Sheppard | November 18, 2012 | 11:34 AM EST

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):

Fareed Zakaria Cheers Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage, Marijuana
By Matt Hadro | November 12, 2012 | 4:01 PM EST

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.

Fareed Zakaria Dismisses GOP Charges Against Obama On Libya as 'Highly Politicized'
By Matt Hadro | November 2, 2012 | 4:46 PM EDT

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.

Kofi Annan Says Paul Ryan Is 'Dead Wrong' About Syria
By Noel Sheppard | October 21, 2012 | 9:37 AM EDT

During the recent vice presidential debate, Paul Ryan blamed former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for not being able to resolve the escalating conflict in Syria.

On a CNN interview to be aired Sunday, Annan struck back saying, "He was dead wrong. He was dead wrong."

NewsBusters Kept Zakaria From Joining Team Obama?
By Tim Graham | August 29, 2012 | 5:26 PM EDT

Due to vacation, I missed an article Brent Baker showed me that’s really shocking. In the August 27 Newsweek, Tunku Varadarajan – the man who replaced Fareed Zakaria in the post of editor of Newsweek International – wrote what he calls a “full-frontal polemic” defending Zakaria against what he called the “plagiarism McCarthyites” and a “lynch mob”... that begins with me.

Before commenting on this hyperbolic article, let’s isolate the most interesting line about Zakaria: “He was in favorable consideration by Team Obama for the post of national security adviser. That will not, now happen.” This would have been the second journalist to revolve from news magazine bigwig to Democrat foreign-policy bigwig: see Time’s Strobe Talbott, who became Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of state.

Time Goes Soft on Xerox Zakaria: Plagiarism Suspension Becomes One Week (Update: CNN Also Folds)
By Tim Graham | August 16, 2012 | 5:15 PM EDT

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."

WashPost Joins Time, CNN In Suspending Fareed Zakaria's Column After Plagiarism Scandal
By Tim Graham | August 14, 2012 | 10:22 PM EDT

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.

 

CNN's Kurtz Credits NewsBusters With Exposing Zakaria's 'Cardinal Journalistic Sin' of Plagiarism
By Tim Graham | August 12, 2012 | 8:29 PM EDT

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)

Time, CNN Star Fareed Zakaria Suspended for Admitted Plagiarism
By Tim Graham | August 10, 2012 | 6:19 PM EDT

[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:

Colin Powell Gives Romney Good Grades: Overseas Trip 'Demonstrated He Can Participate In Foreign Relations'
By Noel Sheppard | August 10, 2012 | 5:18 PM EDT

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media spent many days in recent weeks trashing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for alleged gaffes he made during his overseas trip to Europe and Israel.

Rather surprisingly, in an interview to be aired on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday, Obama-supporter and former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave Romney good grades for his trip saying, "He demonstrated that he can participate in foreign relations in a way that is constructive...I think he did himself good by going to these countries" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Zakaria Asks Koch Brothers Funded Global Warming Flipflopper 'Have They Asked for Their Money Back?'
By Noel Sheppard | August 5, 2012 | 11:27 AM EDT

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):