Regret the Error

This morning the Los Angeles Times issued a formal retraction for its March story about an assault on rapper Tupac Shakur. It had previously apologized for the article. (Regret post here.)

The apology did contain elements of a retraction, but it’s not a bad thing to see the paper follow up and drive home the point that it doesn’t stand behind the information and accusations contained in the story. (The piece has now been removed from the Times website.) That said, this retraction is primarily for legal reasons. The Times wants to make sure it has this on record in case any of those implicated in the article decide to pursue legal action. From the retraction:

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.
Consequently, The Times is retracting the March 17 Web publications as well as a shorter version of the article that appeared on Page E1 in the March 19 Calendar section of the newspaper. Statements that Philips made in two online chats, on March 18 and 25, and on The Times’ Soundboard blog on March 21 also are being retracted.

It’s interesting to note how many things the Times has to retract: the online story, print story, two chats and a blog post. This shows the paper did a decent job of leveraging the story for its properties. Now that effort has come back to bite it in the butt. As time goes on, we’ll likely see more examples of papers issuing multi-part retractions for big, wrong stories that were parceled out over different web properties. Retractions are only going to get more complicated.

Among other things, the March 17 article and related Times publications reported that newly discovered information supported Shakur’s claims that associates of music executive Sean “Diddy” Combs orchestrated an attack in which Shakur was injured at the Quad Recording Studios in New York on Nov. 30, 1994.
The information, which came from the purported FBI reports and other sources, said that James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond, a talent manager; Jacques “Haitian Jack” Agnant, a figure on the New York hip-hop scene; and James Sabatino, purportedly one of Combs’ associates, arranged the assault on Shakur because they were angry that he had rejected overtures to sign with Combs’ Bad Boy Records.
The Times now believes that Sabatino fabricated the FBI reports and concocted his role in the assault as well as his supposed relationships with Combs, Rosemond and Agnant.
Consequently, The Times specifically retracts all statements in the article, and in its related publications, that state or suggest in any way that Rosemond, Agnant and Sabatino orchestrated or played any role in the assault on Shakur or that they lured him into an ambush at the Quad studios.
To the extent these publications could be interpreted as creating the impression that Combs was involved in arranging the attack, The Times wishes to correct that misimpression, which was neither stated in the article nor intended.
The Times also reported that Sabatino told Combs in advance that Shakur was going to be attacked. The Times now believes that Sabatino had no involvement in the attack and that he never spoke to Combs about it. Any statements or implications suggesting that Combs was given advance knowledge of the assault on Shakur, or played any role in it, are specifically retracted.

Those last few paragraphs seem to plead please don’t sue. But they’re also necessary because the article did have the effect of implicating several people in what could be called an attempted murder. That’s a serious accusation, and Sean Combs’ lawyer was frank in saying he wasn’t completely satisfied with the initial apology.

At the time, Howard Weitzman issued a statement saying that the “apology is, at best, a first step, but it doesn’t undo the false and defamatory nature of the story, or the suspicion and innuendo that Mr. Combs has had to endure due to these untruthful allegations and the irresponsible conduct of this particular reporter.”

We’ll see if the retraction satisfies Combs, but it doesn’t put the matter to rest. The paper had previously said it would walk back the cat to see how the story, which was built on fake documents provided by a scam artist, made it into print. We should all be waiting for that report, even if the lawyers aren’t.