LA Times in the middle of a fake documents scandal of their own

I’m still swamped, but wanted to link up quickly to Patterico’s post on the LAT’s admission that a recent article they wrote on a 1994 attack on murdered rapper Tupac Shakur was based on, in part … fabricated documents.

And news outlets still wonder why so many have become skeptical of what they report?

One Response to "LA Times in the middle of a fake documents scandal of their own"

Leslie says:

March 27, 2008 at 11:20 am

Howie Kurtz has the whole sad story in the Post.

LINK

Ironically, the smoking gun was the reverse of what happened to Dan Rather, as Howie Kurtz explains:

William Bastone, the Smoking Gun’s editor, said he immediately “thought something smelled” after looking at the FBI documents posted on the paper’s Web site — particularly the fact that they appeared to originate from a typewriter, although the bureau’s agents switched to computers about 30 years ago.

The humiliation for the Times is reminiscent of the black eye that CBS received for using what the network presented as National Guard records in Dan Rather’s 2004 report on President Bush’s military service.

Haven’t journalists learned (a) that when a story seems to good to be true, it probably is (except, I suppose when Elliot Spitzer is involved) and (b) to pay as much attention to the look and feel of the “document” as they do to its text.

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