TIME accepts Fareed’s apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well. As a result, we are suspending Fareed’s column for a month, pending further review.
What the news of Fareed Zakaria’s suspension for plagiarism brings up for me – As well as the basic “Why would you do that, do you really think you wouldn’t get caught, you idiot?” thing, because, hi, it’s the Internet – is the larger question about how much working off of firsthand reports counts as plagiarism. As ridiculous as it may sound, that’s something I find myself worrying about quite a bit, especially for things like the Comics Alliance stories I do, which (unlike the Newsarama blog posts) are attempts at straight-forward, no-editorializing, fast (ie, short) pieces that are often just rewriting press releases or announcements. I always try and offer something beyond simply “And then they said this and then this,” even if it’s just trying to draw connections between two pieces of information not necessarily obvious in the source, but, yeah. Man. I probably accidentally plagiarize more than I’m either aware of, or would want to.