Plagiarist Zakaria Lands $85k Speaking Gig

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria has landed a lucrative speaking bureau gig, despite having brought shame upon the network for having plagiarized others’ hard work. Royce Carlton, a premiere and exclusive speakers bureau, has taken Zakaria on as a speaker and trumpeted the decision in a mass email.

Royce Carlton account executive Robert S. Levins confirmed the bureau will pay Mr. Zakaria $85,000 for an appearance. 

It is unknown whether or not Zakaria will be the first admitted plagiarist to have joined Royce Carlton’s ranks. It is possible that Zakaria may be breaking a record for the highest paid speech request of any admitted thief throughout history.

Zakaria’s troubles began in the summer of 2012 when NRA News’ Cam Edwards noticed that Zakaria had written a paragraph that copied almost verbatim another writer’s paragraph from months before on advocating gun control. Newsbusters’ Tim Graham then broke the story.

The troubled paragraphs show the clear theft:

April 22, 2012 — The New Yorker‘s Jill Lepore wrote:

As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.”

Summer of 2012 — Fareed Zakaria wrote in Time Magazine:

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.”

Zakaria was ultimately suspended from Time and CNN, but both outlets decided to take him back and allow him to continue with their enterprises. Royce Carlton has apparently decided to follow suit and reward the plagiarist.