CNN journalists are scrutinizing the ethical standards of Fox News and one of its primetime hosts, Sean Hannity, even though CNN continues to employ and provide a large platform for Fareed Zakaria, who media ethics experts have deemed a serial plagiarist.
Hannity is catching flak after it was revealed Monday that he sought legal consultation from Michael Cohen, the longtime personal attorney to President Trump and who is responsible for paying out hush money to women claiming to have had affairs several years ago with the president.
[Related: For CNN, one opinion-heavy tweet is worse than plagiarism]
Hannity has described his past consultation with Cohen as “minimal” and “focused on real estate.” Fox News has said it “continues to support” Hannity after reviewing the matter, though a spokesperson for the network admitted it was “surprised” by the revelation.
CNN reporters pounced on the incident, accusing Hannity and Fox News of an ethical lapse.
“Hannity will face no penalty for his relentless defense of Michael Cohen without disclosing he was a client,” said CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski. “Not surprising but more evidence that Fox is different from everywhere else.”
CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter said Hannity was trying to “have it both ways” by claiming to be a commentator rather than a reporter, but still reserving the right to report news. “He still should have disclosed this,” Stelter said of the Cohen relationship.
But though Fareed Zakaria has an extensive history of what many critics have described as serial plagiarism stretching over a period of years, CNN still employs him to host an hour-long weekend world affairs show.
Hannity will face no penalty for his relentless defense of Michael Cohen without disclosing he was a client. Not surprising but more evidence that Fox is different from everywhere else. https://t.co/qTOclc5bMQ
— andrew kaczynski? (@KFILE) April 17, 2018
CNN suspended Zakaria for seven days in 2012 after he acknowledged that he made “a terrible mistake” in a column he wrote for Time magazine, wherein he took wording from work by historian Jill Lepore without any attribution.
Two years later, anonymous bloggers found more work by Zakaria that lifted passages and wording from other journalists and authors without attribution, forcing multiple outlets that had published Zakaria to review his past work and place notes on them alerting viewers of the issue.
The publications include the Washington Post, where an editor called the indiscretions “problematic”; and Newsweek, where notes on some of his past work alerts readers that “his articles have been the subject of complaints claiming that they contain material that should have been attributed to others.”
At the time of newly uncovered allegations of plagiarism, Politico interviewed two media ethics experts who concluded Zakaria had plagiarized.
“It falls within what I would consider plagiarism,” said Robert Drechsel, who at the time served as the James E. Burgess chair and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Kelly McBride, a vice president at the Poynter Institute, said, “It’s plagiarism,” though she allowed that it would be considered “low-level plagiarism.”
Zakaria also continues to write as a columnist for the Washington Post.
CNN did not return a request for comment Tuesday from the Washington Examiner.
