Discussion for article #226643
And, they’re right. When you cite statistics, you should have the same numbers for the same info. When quoting surveys, best practice is to match the wording of the question. I may disagree with Zakaria on a lot, but this is a weak charge.
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Who are these Twitter users? How do we know this is not just a hit job financed by a shadowy group? At some point, we should demand that they expose their identity.
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Character assassination made simple . Those who print anonymous accusations, without doing a little leg work, should be ashamed.
Well, we all KNOW who it is, don’t we, Fareed? Their names rhyme with “Marack” and “Bichelle”. 
It is quite peculiar that Zakaris’s don’t understand what plagiarism is : using another writer’s words and pretending that these words are your own.
No, Zakaris is not a stupid plagiarizer, just a clever one.
We’ll see if anything comes of this, but if nothing else, the first stage in something like this is always, ALWAYS, denial.
The easy availability of text-comparison programs has made plagiarism charges much easier. I wonder how long before writers will have to adopt a “clean-room” approach where they can prove that they never read certain sources.
News and opinion writing have been formulaic for at least the past century – it’s pretty much a given when a pundit pens a passage on a particular subject that they’ll use the same words and constructions as someone somewhere has used before.
(How long has this been going on? Well, there’s an O Henry story in which a reporter gets a secret message across by using stock phrases with one word left out.)
The question is, why didn’t TPM wave off the accusations, since they were absurd on the face of it?
Perhaps they’ll go with teh Chuck Todd excuse of “We’re just here to report stuff”?