p2pnet - rss feed: LA Times apologises for Tupac Shakur story
p2pnet news | Music:- In a long apology, the Los Angeles Times says it’s sorry for running a story about the brutal 1994 attack on rap superstar Tupac Shakur, “partially based on documents that appear to have been fabricated”.Named were reporter Chuck Philips and deputy managing editor Marc Duvoisin.
Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, in September, 1996. He died six days later.
“The criticism came first from The Smoking Gun website, which said the newspaper had been the victim of a hoax, and then from subjects of the story, who said they had been defamed,” says the LA Times.
“In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job,” Philips said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m sorry.”
In his statement, Duvoisin added: “We should not have let ourselves be fooled. That we were is as much my fault as Chuck’s. I deeply regret that we let our readers down.”
Times editor Russ Stantonsaid the newspaper will launch an internal review of the documents and the reporting surrounding the story.
“We published this story with the sincere belief that the documents were genuine, but our good intentions are beside the point,” Stanton said. “The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used. We apologize both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents and, as a result, in the story. We are continuing to investigate this matter and will fulfill our journalistic responsibility for critical self-examination.”
The story first appeared March 17 on latimes.com as, “An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War,” describing a November 30, 1994, ambush at Quad Recording Studios in New York, where he was, “pistol-whipped and shot several times by three men”.
No one was ever charged, “but before his death two years later, Shakur said repeatedly that he suspected allies of rap impresario Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.”
Adds the LA Times:
“The assault touched off a bicoastal war between Shakur and fellow adherents of West Coast rap and their East Coast rivals, most famously represented by Christopher Wallace, better known as Notorious B.I.G. Both Shakur and Wallace ultimately died violently.”
Also known as 2Pac and Makaveli, Shakur was a film actor and social activist.
“He is recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-selling rap artist, with over 75,000,000 albums sold worldwide, including over 50,000,000 in the United States,” says the Wikipedia.
“Most of Shakur’s songs are about growing up amid violence and hardship in ghettos, racism, problems in society and conflicts with other rappers. Shakur’s work is known for advocating political, economic, social and racial equality, as well as his raw descriptions of violence, drug and alcohol abuse and conflicts with the law.”
Also See:
Los Angeles Times - The Times apologizes over article on rapper, March 27, 2008
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