Oops!: News That Was Not Fit to Print

Posted on Apr 8, 2008

Flickr / Mr. Littlehand

In an extraordinary 633-word retraction, The Los Angeles Times has renounced an article it published last month that claimed to have new information about an attack in 1994 on rap artist Tupac Shakur, who later was killed.

An internal Times investigation confirmed what the Web site The Smoking Gun reported on March 26: The FBI documents that Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chuck Philips used to bolster his story were fraudulent. The Times said Philips had believed the documents to be genuine.

Los Angeles Times:

An article and related materials published on the Los Angeles Times website on March 17 have been removed from the site because they relied heavily on information that The Times no longer believes to be credible.

The article, titled “An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War” and written by Times staff writer Chuck Philips, purported to relate “new” information about a 1994 assault on rap star Tupac Shakur, including a description of events contained in FBI reports.

The Times has since concluded that the FBI reports were fabricated and that some of the other sources relied on—including the person Philips previously believed to be the “confidential source” cited in the FBI reports—do not support major elements of the story.

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