First an apology, now a retraction. Next, a settlement?

Pulitzer prizes will be announced Monday. Maybe the LATimes will win one or two, but it’s a safe bet that they’ll never win one for their Tupac coverage (although the reporter who wrote the article already won one years ago). The paper apologized over a week ago, but they decided to follow the apology with an retraction:

FOR THE RECORD
The Times retracts Tupac Shakur story
April 7, 2008

An article and related materials published on the Los Angeles Times website on March 17 have been removed from the site because they relied heavily on information that The Times no longer believes to be credible.

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 goes on…)