Tabloid television show Entertainment Tonight has decided it will not issue an official retraction of its bungled Angelina Jolie birth report, which wasn't so much an example of the show's bad reporting as it was their producers' decision to turn an anonymous blog report into a full-blown news item. Turns out, there's no reason to! The weeks-early report, which said Jolie gave birth in May, stained the brand's reputation inside the gossip community — but doesn't appear to affected its reputation among viewers. After all, Americans expect even the tabloid news media to get the story wrong.

NBC-produced Access Hollywood's exec producer Rob Silverstein isn't letting the slip up disappear so easily: "In our world, something like this is like calling the election wrong," he says.

But CBS/Paramount's ET doesn't care. "We have moved on and so have our viewers," says an ET spokeswoman. So this is all we're getting.

Which is one way of getting around the whole "never issued a retraction" thing, isn't it Mary Hart?

[TVD]