Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett gushed over disgraced journalists Dan Rather and Mary Mapes on Monday's New Day on CNN. Michaela Pereira interviewed the Oscar winners about their new film, Truth, which is adaptation of Mapes's account of the Memogate scandal. Redford underlined that the apparent loyalty between Rather and Mapes "made a big impression on me." Blanchett hyped that "they're both compelling, fascinating, vital, intelligent, hilarious people."

The New York Times has not merely climbed aboard the bandwagon of Truth, which exalts the fraudulent September 2004 CBS 60 Minutes report about President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service. It's now serving as the film's de facto lead apologist.

The most recent example demonstrating how deeply in the tank the Old Gray Lady has gone is Stephen Holden's Thursday film review published in Friday's print edition. Holden's praise comes from an alternative universe where genuine "truth" clearly doesn't matter, and uses a tortured analogy which in reality disproves his attempt at making a point (bolds are mine throughout this post):

If Brian Williams or any of the executives at NBC thought that the controversy over his "fake Iraq story" might start to die down, developments this evening have proven that they were sadly mistaken.

The quoted words in the previous sentence are from a headline at an Associated Press story by David Bauder, the wire service's TV writer. The fact that the nation's self-described "essential global news network" felt comfortable using those words to describe the 12 year-old saga of Williams's fabricated adventure in Iraq is actually among the least of his and his network's troubles tonight. Two major stories at the New York Post's Page Six appear to have made their continuing with the status quo very difficult to imagine.

On Tuesday, all three network morning shows dutifully touted a fake interview President Obama conducted with comedian Zach Galifianakis designed to help the commander-in-chief hock ObamaCare to young people. On NBC's Today, social media co-host Carson Daly gushed: "It's over six minutes long...all of it is really, really funny....You know, the First Lady's been everywhere showing her comedy chops and it's been great. But boy, the President, he is amazing in this. So check that out this morning if you have time." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Later in the show's 9 a.m. ET hour, weatherman Al Roker praised Obama's comedic genius: "It's about the delivery and the President shows he's got the comedy chops." Co-host Tamron Hall declared: "Yes, yes. Which he shows at the White House Correspondents' Dinner every year." Co-host Willie Geist explained: "It was part of a – this concerted effort to promote the Affordable Care Act. Because they get into that and the President's allowed to explain it."

File this under: "She can dish it out but can't take it."

Tuesday, the Turkish newspaper Takvim published a fictional interview of CNN's Christiane Amanpour said to have taken place in Atlanta. As seen in a Google (less than perfect) Translate screen grab, it is clearly identified as sarcasm at its end. That didn't stop Amanpour from tweeting her anger at the fake interview while implicitly leading readers to believe that the paper was trying to pass it off as real: