LA Times, New York Times Gets Duped, More Black Eyes for Newspapers

Where's Ashton Kutcher when you need him?

At the end of every Punk'd ruse, he'd come wandering onto the scene, a move that would immediately alleviate the prankee's worries. No, you aren't being arrested. No, your music video isn't getting shut down. No, your $300,000 car wasn't destroyed in a freak accident. Viewers could see the anxiety melt away as shock set in. You mean this whole thing was all a stunt? their faces asked. Oh, Ashton, ya got me. I'm sure Chuck Philips would feel a lot better right now if Kutcher had come to the Los Angeles Times's newsroom before he wrote that massive story on March 17 implicating some of Sean "Diddy" Combs's associates in the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur.

As you probably know, Shakur didn't die in that incident, but he did swear up and down to anyone who would listen that Combs and Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace were trying to kill him. He was, in fact, murdered in Las Vegas less than two years later, six months before Wallace was gunned down in L.A. Both of these high-profile deaths remain unsolved, so a story further connecting the two and recapping the east coast-west coast rap wars that culminated with their untimely demises would have readers chomping at the bit, right? Wrong, apparently. Or more accurately, the "evidence" that was the linchpin of that connection is what was wrong.

After Combs (again) denied any involvement, the Web warriors at over The Smoking Gun came to the rescue (again), confirming that Philips's source, a two-bit hustler in prison on fraud charges, had forged FBI documents for the lawsuit he'd filed against Combs---information that Philips never checked out with the FBI itself. (This only several days after it was revealed that The New York Times and everyone else got played by "Margaret B. Jones" and her fake gang banger memoir.) Philips's Spidey sense should've been tingling from the very beginning. And maybe, just maybe, these documents did set off alarm bells and he chose to ignore them because the story was too good to let go. We'll never know if that's correct; it's not like he's going to tell us. But it is yet another teachable moment for everyone who writes stories.

On slate.com, writer Jack Shafer goes over how Philips and the L.A. Times could have "dodged the Tupac hoaxer":

Avoid confirmation bias. It's a universal human trait to seek evidence that confirms what you already believe, to interpret the evidence you've collected to bolster your existing view, and to avoid the evidence that would undermine your notions. "Philips said in an interview that he had believed the documents were legitimate because, in the reporting he had already done on the story, he had heard many of the same details," the Times reports today. Did Philips' willingness to believe what the documents said blind him to the typographic clues that the Smoking Gun says point to forgery? "[The documents] confirmed many of the things I'd learned on my own," Philips said in an interview before the debunking.

Know the provenance of your document. Sources who leak documents to reporters are often sketchy about how they obtained them. Until proved otherwise, every document should be assumed to be fake. In the Times case, Philips trusted the documents because they had been filed in court. That they were filed by Sabatino, currently doing time on fraud charges, should have raised red flags. That he filed them in a lawsuit against Sean Combs—long rumored to have some role in the feud between Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. that ended in the murders of both—should have raised red flagpoles. That the story names Sabatino as one of two individuals who set up an attack on Shakur should have sent the flagpoles into orbit. According to the Times, Philips did not ask the FBI about the documents that are so instrumental to his story. A former FBI man appears to have thought the documents genuine.

Don't trust documents, trust evidence. A document is only a piece of paper with writing on it. Even if authentic, a document is not necessarily true. The FBI, just to mention one organization, has produced hundreds of thousands of authentic documents whose combined truth content is less than zero. In the Times case, the discredited documents appear to have been prepared with a typewriter, not a computer, which should have revealed them as counterfeit.

Enlist outside experts. Many newspapers conduct their investigations inside a tiny, bias-confirming box because they fear an information leak will get them scooped. If the Times had brought in outside experts—even other experienced Times journalists—to "murder board" the story before publication, the paper might not have a tractortrailer-load of eggs on its face today. The less a stake an outside source has in a story, the better his critique will likely be. According to the Times, the only people to review the story prior to publication were the primary editor and two editors on the copy desk, which is low by Times standards.

Always ask, "Why now?" When new and startling evidence surfaces to help solve an ancient mystery, as happened in the Times story, a journalist must always ask, "Why now? Why hasn't this evidence appeared before?" Is it because the source of the evidence stands to gain financially by its publication? Because the evidence will spring them from jail? Because they're a notorious liar who loves to lie? Cui bono, baby, cui bono.

Never trust a flimflam man. Sabatino possesses a long rap sheet. From the Smoking Gun: "The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs's trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion 'Suge' Knight." Also, "[From jail], Sabatino worked with a raggedy group of accomplices—most of whom he never met—and defrauded firms of upwards of $1 million."

Beware, ye writers and future writers: this could easily happen to you if you don't do your due diligence.

Aiesha D. Little
NABJ Adviser
UCABJ