For CNN, a reporter tweeting out a single opinion is apparently more serious than a host plagiarizing.
CNN suspended global affairs correspondent Elise Labott for two weeks Thursday after she disregarded the network’s guidelines on objectivity, and criticized Congress for passing a bill to condition the acceptance of Middle East refugees into the United States.
In contrast, CNN host Fareed Zakaria was suspended for only six days in 2012 after it was discovered he had plagiarized a New Yorker article on gun control.
Labott’s suspension, as a few journalists have noted this week, is justified because she broke CNN’s established rules regarding newsroom objectivity.
On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House voted 289-137 to pass a bill to limit the number of Syrian and Iraqi refugees coming into the United States. Unhappy with the end result, Labott tweeted, “House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish.”
House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish @CNNPolitics https://t.co/5RvZwVftgD
— Elise Labott (@eliselabottcnn) November 19, 2015
CNN later suspended her for the tweet, and she issued a public apology and said on social media, “Everyone, It was wrong of me to editorialize. My tweet was inappropriate and disrespectful. I sincerely apologize.”
For some reporters, the response from CNN’s brass makes sense.
“[Labott is] CNN’s global affairs correspondent and not a commentator, meaning that she’s bound to comply with the CNN neutrality principle/sham,” wrote the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.
“Evenhandedness, mind you, isn’t just a matter of journalistic principle for CNN. It’s a business imperative. Competitors Fox News and MSNBC are ‘two partisan networks, that are looking out for their viewers,’ CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker has said. That split, he has argued, makes CNN ever more “essential’ to viewers, he added.
New York magazine’s Jesse Singal agreed.
“CNN’s correspondents aren’t supposed to show any signs they favor one side of a debate over another. … at CNN it still prevails, and Labott agreed to abide by it,” Singal wrote.
But if Labott’s suspension is about CNN retaining objectivity and trust in its reporting, the network’s handling of Zakaria’s plagiarism problem raises real questions about how it weighs ethical lapses.
Zakaria came under fire in 2012 after Time magazine and CNN investigated claims he had plagiarized his Aug. 20 column on gun control. The CNN host admitted to the act, saying in a statement that he had made a “terrible mistake” and that it was “a serious lapse” in judgment.
“I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time and CNN, and to my readers and viewers everywhere,” he added.
Zakaria was reinstated in less than a week, and the network concluded after a review of his body of work that the Aug. 20 plagiarism was an “isolated” and “unintentional” act meriting no continuation of his suspension.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
In 2014, two anonymous bloggers alleged that they found nearly three dozen additional examples of Zakaria lifting someone else’s work for unattributed reuse in his columns, books and television appearances. Their claim was serious enough to prompt another round of investigations from media outlets associated with Zakaria’s work, including Newsweek, Slate and the Washington Post.
Newsweek found seven examples of improper citation in articles submitted by the CNN host.
Slate updated one of Zakaria’s articles to include an editors note reading, “This piece does not meet Slate’s editorial standards, having failed to properly attribute quotations and information.”
The Washington Post also added corrections to a select number of Zakaria’s articles, though the newspaper’s editors maintained that what they found didn’t quite amount to out-and-out plagiarism.
CNN, however, didn’t seem as concerned about the renewed interest in the originality of Zakaria’s work.
“CNN has the highest confidence in the excellence and integrity of Fareed Zakaria’s work,” the network said in a statement. “In 2012, we conducted an extensive review of his original reporting for CNN, and beyond the initial incident for which he was suspended and apologized for, found nothing that violated our standards. In the years since we have found nothing that gives us cause for concern.”
The cable news company took no disciplinary action against Zakaria in 2014. Meanwhile, Labbott won’t be returning to the network until after Thanksgiving.
CNN did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
