Daily Beast: Meet The Man Who Wrongly Accused Fareed Zakaria of Plagiarism

[Hissyspit]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/16/clyde-prestowitz.html

Meet The Man Who Wrongly Accused Fareed Zakaria of Plagiarism
by David Frum Aug 16, 2012 10:45 AM EDT

- snip -

Yesterday, the Washington Post retracted its story accusing Fareed Zakaria of scalping quoted material from a book by Clyde Prestowitz.

The quoted material was in fact properly attributed in all editions of Fareed's The Post-American World. See below for the details.

- snip -

Fareed responded with a general defense of his work methods, but in print, that read very much like what it was not: a confession of the validity of Prestowitz's specific claim.

The rest unfolded as we saw.

Prestowitz has since apologized for his actions: but what was he originally thinking? In his own statement, Prestowitz claims that "I had overlooked this reference earlier because the note was attached to Tom’s book title". How was it he didn't notice his own, very easy to resolve mistake for so long? And why did he decide to recklessly launch a damaging accusation on such a casual basis—starting a controversy that damaged not only Fareed's reputation, but that of the reporter, Paul Farhi, who incautiously trusted Prestowitz's word?

MORE[p]

[sad sally]

1. Has CNN reinstated him and acknowledged the mistake?

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. CNN suspended him for other plagiarism

This accusation was made on Monday in the WP; CNN suspended him after he admitted plagiarising material for a Time column, the Friday before:

Correction:

This article incorrectly states that in his 2008 book, “The Post-American World,” Fareed Zakaria failed to cite the source of a quotation taken from another book. In fact, Zakaria did credit the other work, by Clyde V. Prestowitz. Endnotes crediting Prestowitz were contained in hardcover and paperback editions of Zakaria’s book. The Post should have examined copies of the books and should not have published the article. We regret the error and apologize to Fareed Zakaria.

...
Prestowitz was unmoved. “I think there should be an apology,” he said Monday. “I don’t want to unfairly level accusations (because) those of us who are writers know a lot of things can happen. But I feel I have a justifiable complaint. It kind of has been bugging me for a while.”

On Friday, Zakaria apologized to Time magazine, its readers and historian Jill Lepore for an Aug. 20 Time column on gun control that he acknowledged contained material taken without attribution from an article Lepore wrote in April for the New Yorker magazine. Time and CNN, which airs Zakaria’s weekly discussion program, both suspended him after his admission. Part of Zakaria’s column was published on CNN.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/more-questions-raised-about-fareed-zakarias-work/2012/08/13/0939fa48-e598-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_story.html

[still_one]

2. Washington Post, just like the NY Times have become mediocre papers, and have been so

For some time

[flamingdem]

3. Prestowitz needs to get on his knees right now and beg in public for an apology

What an idiot.

[spooky3]

4. Good on David Frum for taking actions to get this corrected.

A conservative with integrity and initiative--refreshing!