LA Times Apologizes for Fake Diddy, Tupac Story

The Los Angeles Times apologized for using documents that were apparently fabricated in a story implicating associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs in a 1994 assault on rapper Tupac Shakur.

"The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used," Editor Russ Stanton said in a story posted Wednesday night on the newspaper's Web site. "We apologize both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents … and in the story."

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Chuck Philips, who wrote the story, and his supervisor, Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, also apologized.

The apologies followed an investigation launched by Stanton after The Smoking Gun Web site reported earlier in the day that the paper was conned by a prisoner who doctored the documents.

Combs denied that he had any prior knowledge of or involvement in the robbery and shooting of Shakur at a New York recording studio. He and other subjects of the story claimed they had been defamed by the newspaper.

The Smoking Gun said the documents seemed phony because they appeared to be written on a typewriter instead of a computer and included blacked-out sections not typically found in such documents, among other problems.

The Web site claimed the documents were fabricated by a prison inmate with a history of exaggerating his place in the rap music world.

The Times said its March 17 story was based on FBI records, interviews with people at the scene of the 1994 shooting, and statements to the FBI by an informant.

None of the sources was named. [MORE]