Just to prove that one of us in the right-wing attack machine is jiggy with the kids, let's examine the recent article in the Los Angeles Times regarding the 1994 murder of rapper/drug dealer/sexual abuser/humanitarian Tupac Shakur. In trying to implicate fellow rapper Sean "Puffy" "P. Diddy" Combs in the crime, reporter Chuck Phillips based his theory on, quoting the Times:
FBI records in which a confidential informant accused two men of helping to set up the attack on Shakur -- James Rosemond, a prominent rap talent manager, and James Sabatino, identified in the story as a promoter . . . [The] two allegedly wanted to curry favor with Combs and believed Shakur had disrespected them.
I know what you're thinking: Violence among rap artists? What is the world coming to?
But that's not the meat of the story. No, it was when the Smoking Gun website did its own investigation of the Times piece. It seems that Phillips based his entire thesis on interviews with James Sabatino, a conman described by his father as "a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug." The FBI "records" were not only forgeries, the Smoking Gund discovered, but badly-spelled forgeries at that, created on a typewriter three decades after the feds switched to computers. Sabatino's claims of being a Diddy insider were false to the extreme.
So what do we have? A news outlet that's seen better days. A reporter with an agenda. A delusional conman churning out forgeries of official documents easily disproven by people in pajamas. Ring a bell with anyone? (Hint: CBS. Dan Rather. Bill Burkett. Pres. Bush's National Guard "documents.")
Perhaps these professional journalists need to take a lesson from the hated bloggers. Like, oh, how to be professional.
