Wednesday, August 15, 2012

In this corner …

… Fareed Zakaria Didn’t Plagiarize! - The Daily Beast. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… and in this corner, the Washington Post: More questions raised about Fareed Zakaria’s work.

4 comments:

  1. Without weighing in on the extent of Zakaria's crimes here, I can't help but think that he and many other high-profile pundits who let themselves get stretched too thin could benefit from the sort of thing most of us humble bloggers do: a simple block quote with a link.

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  2. Precisely, Jeff. Precisely.

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  3. What Paul Farhi is getting at in the Washington Post item is the use of cliche, not plagiarism either. To say that something is like the Titanic about to hit an iceberg is not protected property.

    I am wondering if these people associated with newspapers are confusing "lower" journalistic standards with plagiarism. It seems a money-making journal would always be overly cautious for the sake of a bad judgment from the courts--or in this case from the paying public.

    Edward Jay Epstein talks about the lack of plagiarism, because the one to site was not Lepore but Winkler, the latter whom Zakaria did cite.

    Journalistic standards would say to blockquote the facts. The laws against plagiarism don't say to.

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  4. I want to add that I never heard of Zakaria in my life. Also, as of today, I have never heard him talking. I don't watch TV. So I am not defending a favorite personality. I'm looking at this issue just short of saying, "You gotta be kiddin' me."

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