Entertainment Tonight still hasn’t issued a full-on retraction for its erroneous report last Friday that Angelina Jolie had given birth in France.

The best it could deliver was this, sent from the law firm Lavely & Singer to media outlets on Monday:

“A random individual has engaged in a scheme to intentionally harm my client and deceive her fans, the public and the media through illegal and tortuous impersonation of Ms. Jolie’s longtime assistant, Holly [Goline].”

Now the Associated Press — which picked up the story after ET ran with it — has discovered that the television program knew the story was all kinds of fake before they even aired it.

Producers at ET were contacted by the real Holly Goline hours before the episode broadcast and the report was denied wholesale.

Shortly after the story was posted but several hours before the broadcast aired, Goline told “Entertainment Tonight” that she was not the person with whom they had been corresponding, a person with direct knowledge of the conversation told The Associated Press. That account was confirmed by another person close to Jolie.

“‘Entertainment Tonight’ was told before the broadcast that their information came from an impostor,” said the second person. Both people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The people said there were several conversations Friday, by e-mail, text message and telephone, between Goline and “Entertainment Tonight.” Meanwhile, the story was quickly challenged by several other celebrity news outlets.

The TV show stood by its story Friday night, with host Mary Hart saying on the air, “Just this morning, a source who says she was inside the delivery room tells us yes, the babies were born and yes, mother and babies are fine.”

Now that’s what I like to call journalistic ethics. I know such a concept and the gossip media aren’t exactly peanut butter and jelly, but short of Angelina and her big bump being photographed this week, what is it going to take for ET to cop to their mistake?