Bangalore: Time magazine and CNN have suspended prominent Indian American journalist Fareed Zakaria , their columnist and television host, after he apologized for plagiarizing sections of his column in the Aug 20 issue of Time, reports IANS.

His article "The Case for Gun Control" carried some passages similar to an article published in ‘The New Yorker’ by staff writer Jill Lepore, on guns in America. NewsBusters, a conservative Web site found out the resemblance and spread it across the Internet.

Zakaria, said in a statement, "media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 23 issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers."

"Time accepts Fareed's apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well," said Ali Zelenko, a spokesperson for the magazine Time.

CNN said in a statement, "we have reviewed Fareed Zakaria's Time column, for which he has apologized. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review."