It looks like Ashton Kutcher isn't the only one feeding false celebrity news to media outlets. After running a story that implicated Sean "Diddy" Combs and his associates in a '94 shooting of rapper (and favourite t-shirt icon of suburban gangsters everywhere) Tupac Shakur, The Los Angeles Times has admitted that it was "duped" into believing the documents crucial to the story were real.

Soon after the Smoking Gun revealed that the supposed FBI records used in the Times' March 17 story were faked by a convicted forger, the Times began an investigation into their authenticity. Late yesterday night, less than a day after the documents were claimed false, the Pulitzer-prize winning author of the story, Chuck Phillips, as well as Times editors Russ Stanton and Marc Duvoisin, printed their apologies on the Times' website.

In the statement, Phillips wrote: "I approached this article the same way I've approached every article I've ever written: in pursuit of the truth. I now believe the truth here is that I got duped. For this, I take full responsibility and I apologize."

According to the Associated Press, before the article's publication, Phillips had shown the documents to a former FBI agent who had stood behind their authenticity. The Times has stated that the March 17 story's claims were based on the documents in question, and interviews with witnesses of the shooting whose identities. The sources were not revealed for their protection. Phillips now says he regrets not doing more to double check the documents' validity.

Diddy, who vehemently denied the story after it was posted on the Times' website last week, sent Ryan Seacrest a text message this morning, saying he was "shocked" the story was ever published, reports E! News.

"Look, this needs to be clear how wrong they were," Diddy wrote.

Shakur's shooting in '94 is commonly believed to have ignited the East Coast/West coast rap feud that led to the death of both Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.

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