LOS ANGELES, March 27 (UPI) -- The Los Angeles Times has acknowledged its controversial story about an attack on Tupac Shakur was based on documents that appear to have been fabricated.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chuck Philips and Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin issued statements of apology after The Smoking Gun Web site offered a detailed account of why it believed the newspaper had been duped by a delusional, imprisoned con man who allegedly forged documents to back up his account of who was involved in the 1994 non-fatal shooting of Shakur.
"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."
"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," Duvoisin added in his own statement.
"We published this story with the sincere belief that the documents were genuine, but our good intentions are beside the point," Times Editor Russ Stanton said. "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."
