The Associated Press is reportedly seeking legal action against the unidentified authors of a false story incriminating R&B superstar R. Kelly, AP representatives said. The AP’s legal department is investigating the origin of the website that first ran a false story alleging that R. Kelly made sexual advances to Shia “Shi Shi” Douglas, the younger sister of R&B singer Ashanti. Tina Douglas, Ashanti and Shia’s mother reaffirmed the pending legal action. “It is a federal charge,” the mother Douglas told AllHipHop.com. “So now they are going after that person. It wasn’t cool with Ashanti on the positive side. Why would they involve her little sister. She is only 16 years old, under age. They better cut it out because plan B was about to go to get my attorney involved because she is a minor.” "When it comes to our attention, we go after whichever web site it is attributed to, but it is difficult to track down," AP deputy managing editor/news Kristin Gazlay told Editor and Publisher, America’s oldest journal that covers that newspaper industry. The fabricated news bit surfaced on the Knight Ridder/Tribune entertainment wire as well as in The Miami Herald before editors noticed. Knight Ridder/Tribune removed the story from its wire once they found out, and ran a correction Tuesday (Nov. 23), according to AP. "It is not unusual for people to doctor stories or completely concoct them,” Gazlay said. “It is unusual for it to appear in print somewhere." The story, falsely accredited to AP entertainment writer Nekesa Moody, seemed authentic, Gazlay said, but Moody has confirmed that she did not write it. Kelly, currently facing 14 counts of child pornography in Chicago, immediately cleared up the false allegations through a press statement, and Ashanti phoned in to a New York radio station to disprove the erroneous report.
The Associated Press
is reportedly seeking legal action against the unidentified authors of a false
story incriminating R&B superstar R. Kelly, AP representatives said.
The AP’s
legal department is investigating the origin of the website that first ran a
false story alleging that R. Kelly made sexual advances to Shia “Shi Shi”
Douglas, the younger sister of R&B singer Ashanti.
Tina Douglas, Ashanti
and Shia’s mother reaffirmed the pending legal action. “It is a
federal charge,” the mother Douglas told AllHipHop.com. “So now
they are going after that person. It wasn’t cool with Ashanti on the positive
side. Why would they involve her little sister. She is only 16 years old, under
age. They better cut it out because plan B was about to go to get my attorney
involved because she is a minor.”
"When it comes
to our attention, we go after whichever web site it is attributed to, but it
is difficult to track down," AP deputy managing editor/news Kristin Gazlay
told Editor and Publisher, America’s oldest journal that covers that newspaper
industry.
The fabricated news bit surfaced on the Knight Ridder/Tribune entertainment
wire as well as in The Miami Herald before editors noticed.
Knight Ridder/Tribune
removed the story from its wire once they found out, and ran a correction Tuesday
(Nov. 23), according to AP.
"It is not
unusual for people to doctor stories or completely concoct them,” Gazlay
said. “It is unusual for it to appear in print somewhere."
The story, falsely
accredited to AP entertainment writer Nekesa Moody, seemed authentic, Gazlay
said, but Moody has confirmed that she did not write it.
Kelly, currently
facing 14 counts of child pornography in Chicago, immediately cleared up the
false allegations through a press statement, and Ashanti phoned in to a New
York radio station to disprove the erroneous report.
