In a recent blog I wrote about the controversy created by an article in the Washington Post about the alleged plagiarisms by Fareed Zakaria. Today the Washington Post issued this apology, posted at the top of Farhi's article:
"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."
What the Post apology does not mention is that while the article damaging Zakaria's reputation was published on the front page for two days, the one paragraph apology is snuck in on page 2 of the paper among the ads and mastheads! It also does not say whether the journalist Farhi who wrote the false article still has a job at the Post or the editor who did not do the basic job of checking the facts in the story before clearing it. So much for journalistic integrity!
This measly apology does not do much to repair the damage done to Zakaria's reputation or indeed to Washington Post's own reputation. Of all the professions, the one that resists any accountability has been journalism. It is only rarely that they fire journalists who have levied false accusations based on demonstrably false data- the only one I recall is the New York Times firing two journalists - one who concocted the Iraq war story and the other who wrote about drug users. It is time that the readers demand a higher level of integrity from this profession as well because clearly self policing does not work.
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