Do Your Job

Going into this project I was very much inclined to support Philips and give him the benefit of the doubt.

I can’t make that claim any longer.

While no amount of analysis and research will ever give us the entire truth surrounding the mistakes that Philips and the LA Times made in publishing this story the fact remains they did publish it and it was filled with many mistakes.

Within the Hip Hop community you hear lots of rumors and they are written off as just that – rumors. For someone who isn’t inside this scene I can see where you might hear things and want to run with them. But if you are going to be reporting something as fact, you need to find the facts.

As this story progressed on Philips desk, I feel like he should have been questioning the legitimacy of Sabatino. That, in my mind, is the story they could have run with and produced a great article.

As it stands Philips trusted sources and documents that he flat out should not have. Regardless of his track record he messed up. While the quick admittance and apology is nice it doesn’t undo the error.

If journalists are going to maintain any level of credibility with the public scenarios like this have to be eliminated. Yes I know mistakes happen, and if this were a simple case of a writer messing up I could probably forgive him.

But it wasn’t.

As I have outlined over the course of this blog, the evidence was their to at least raise red flags and, as it turned out, those flags would have led to some more serious realizations about the supposed “facts” of the story.

The Hip Hop community knew it immediately, the editor for the Smoking Gun new something was up and his reporters did their homework – something Philips ignored.

But did he ignore the process of researching the facts or did he ignore facts he found so as to put out a sensationalized story?

Neither option is too appealing, but a procedural step that was missed is something that can be reiterated as a must during the reporting.

And if it’s the latter, Philips will be another journalist responsible for furthering the publics continual distrust in the media.