Friday, March 28, 2008

Those layers of editors and factcheckers

The Los Angeles Times admits to having been duped:
A Los Angeles Times story about a brutal 1994 attack on rap superstar Tupac Shakur was partially based on documents that appear to have been fabricated, the reporter and editor responsible for the story said Wednesday. ....

"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."

The hoax was discovered the The Smoking Gun website. To add to the embarassment, the LA Times was fooled by a swindler while the swindler was still in prison.

In the LA Times article, notice that there was no fact-checker who apologized: Newspapers do not actually use "fact-checkers."

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