Enigmatic plagiarism sleuths @blippoblappo and @crushingbort discussed their crusade against CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in Esquire Monday, highlighting the limp reaction their accusations have elicited from brass at CNN and elsewhere:
So why did we do it? Why didn’t anyone else? In the month that’s passed since our first post, no actual journalist has publicly followed up with further examples. And despite the scale and continuation of the plagiarism, the response from Zakaria and his bosses have been striking in their lack of honesty or any sense of obligation to viewers and readers. CNN, TIME, and the Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt were quick to give Zakaria their wholehearted support, while Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, Atlantic Media and publisher W.W. Norton have not even replied to requests by Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon for comment.
The bloggers also defended their decision to withhold their identities, saying their accusations were transparently sourced:
Nothing about who we are will give readers a deeper insight into the wide span of plagiarism committed by Fareed Zakaria, and nothing about them gives his massive theft a pass. Our names would be an issue if our work couldn’t be checked. But everything we’ve posted is publically available information that can be verified independently by anyone with an Internet connection. There were no inside sources, disgruntled employees, or discarded scripts recovered from garbage cans.
The Esquire piece comes after a series of four posts by the duo highlighting similarities between Zakaria’s work and sources he did not credit. The pair also says they have “more examples of Zakaria’s plagiarism.”
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