Time magazine and CNN said Thursday that they were reinstating journalist Fareed Zakaria after suspending him last week for plagiarism.
Time said in a statement that it believed Zakaria made an “unintentional error” in what was an “isolated incident” of plagiarism, after his Aug. 20 Time column on gun control took passages from an article in the New Yorker.
“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 Sept. 7,” Time said in a statement.
CNN said that after a thorough internal review of Zakaria’s work for his Sunday TV shows, blogs and documentaries, “we found nothing that merited continuing the suspension.”
“Zakaria has apologized for a journalistic lapse. CNN and Zakaria will work together to strengthen further the procedures for his show and blog,” said the cable news channel, adding that Zakaria’s public-
affairs program, “GPS,” will return Aug. 26.
Time said last week that it was suspending Zakaria for one month after the journalist issued a public apology for borrowing from an April New Yorker essay about gun control for his column.
CNN put no time limit on its suspension after Zakaria wrote a blog post on CNN.com that was similar to the Time column.
Zakaria studied at Yale and Harvard, was managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, then editor of Newsweek International for 10 years before moving to CNN in 2010.
His suspension followed a separate plagiarism scandal involving New Yorker staff writer Jonah Lehrer, who resigned July 30 after admitting he made up quotes from singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in his book “Imagine: How Creativity Works.”
Zakaria writes a separate column for The Washington Post. The column has been on vacation this month and is scheduled to resume in September.