The Los Angeles Times today issued an apology for a report last week that linked Sean “Diddy” Combs to an attack on rap singer Tupac Shakur in 1994. According to the story on the Times’ web site today:

The story first appeared March 17 on latimes.com under the headline “An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War.” The article described a Nov. 30, 1994, ambush at Quad Recording Studios in New York, where the rap singer was pistol-whipped and shot several times by three men. No one has been charged in the crime, but before his death two years later, Shakur said repeatedly that he suspected allies of rap impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs.

The apology comes after a report yesterday by The Smoking Gun web site, which flat-out declared that the LA Times was hoaxed with forged FBI documents.

…those FBI reports, dubbed “302s” due to the numbered government form on which they are prepared, are nowhere to be found in the bureau’s computerized Automated Case Support database, [The Smoking Gun] has learned.

NPR’s Morning Edition reported on the story this morning, with an interview from one of The Smoking Gun’s staff.

Now, it’s a pretty popular pastime to bash the media, so I may be sorry for asking about this. But hopefully, we can do better than a simple day of media-bashing. People need to get their news somewhere, right? Right? C’mon! I’ve got two kids to put through college!

But what does a story like this mean for readers? How does a case like this affect your trust of news sources? Does a story like this shake your faith in the media, if you had any? Through what lens do you interpret the news you read online or in print, or watch on television, or hear on the radio?