Added at the bottom: See Gawker's new, bizarre apology.

KTLA News' entertainment-beat veteran Sam Rubin was briefly under the gun over the weekend after he became the subject of a Gawker report about a tweet made from his account:

It called rapper Yung Berg a “fake ass nigga.”

He soon tweeted that his account had been hacked and that he wouldn't use such a word. We follow Rubin and believed him the minute we saw it: He doesn't have a record of rap beefs. We skipped over it.

Gawker — not so much. Now that site has egg on its face:

Gawker writer Louis Peitzman didn't buy Rubin's explanation that his Twitter account had been taken over temporarily.

The writer noted that, afterward, Rubin tweeted this:

Peitzman said the two tweets, taken together, didn't “add up,” especially because Rubin hadn't yet deleted that “fake ass nigga” tweet.

But Rubin did remove it later, saying:

When Rubin caught wind of the Gawker report, he went ballistic via Twitter, calling Peitzman “a hack” for not reaching out to him and asking, “Is it good to be in Gawker; especially if they get everything wrong?”

Rubin explained that the “boo boo” tweet was a reference to a press screening of Dark Knight Rises that went awry as he watched. Rubin later said the film just stopped, a rarity in the screening game.

Rubin blogged about the episode at KTLA News:

I sent out an apology tweet. Lazy Louis Peitzman said this was just part of the typical arc of high profile people who sent out offensive tweets. NO, you pointless putz; I apologized because I clearly felt badly that any kind of racist statement would be associated with me; and that anyone would actually think I had done something like this.

I don't expect to get a basket of flowers from Gawker. But certainly an apology and correction would be nice. Their “reporting” was simply lazy and slipshod and flat out wrong. And don't get me started on the incredibly unflattering picture they chose.

Peitzman soon fessed up:

In a blog post, Rubin explains that the “boo boo” tweet was in reference to a bungled Dark Knight Rises screening, and that I am a lazy hack and a “pointless putz.” Fair.

In the comments section of his post, he continued:

I've updated this story with Sam Rubin's response. I understand his anger, though I never said that he was lying — just that the story didn't make a lot of sense. It still doesn't. I believe that he didn't tweet “fake ass nigga” to Yung Berg, but why did someone hack his account just to tweet that?

I apologize to Rubin for not reaching out to him, and I appreciate all the colorful ways he's described my laziness. I

Fake ass journo. Just kidding. It happens.

[Added at 4:49 p.m.]: Feeling the heat, it seems, Gawker published another post apologizing for getting it wrong. Strangely, the headline calls Rubin a “Hot Bag of Dickshit.”

Really.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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