“Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

You used to hear that occasionally in newsrooms, but the difference between then and now is, in the old days, they were kidding.

Now, not so much. As the UVA rape story in the rag known as Rolling Stone has fallen apart, the “rape advocates” and moonbats have closed ranks, defending the fable rather than the facts.

A student editor at UVA, ?Julia Horowitz, stuck up for Rolling Stone “journalist” Sabrina ?Rubin Erdely, writing that, “To let fact-checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.”

Where can Rolling Stone go to get its, uh, reputation back? May I suggest the federal courthouse on Thursday? Their heartthrob tousle-haired accused terrorist Boston Marathon bomber will be back in federal court this week.

Put another photo of the blood-stained Muslim welfare leech on the cover like you did last year, after ingesting one too many brandy Alexanders. Here’s your lead, Rolling Stone:

“Like the Beatles arriving in America in January 1964, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left hundreds of teenage girls and Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner swooning in ecstasy as he blew onto Northern Avenue protected by a phalanx …”

Not familiar with Rolling Stone? What Tiger Beat used to be for teenybopper girls, Rolling Stone is for the Pajama Boy generation — a fanzine about crappy no-talent musicians who the “readers” would love to sleep with.

The UVA fiasco is what happens when they try to write something other than a mash note to a heroin addict.

Ten years ago, “60 Minutes” ran a fake story about President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service. Turned out the memos were utterly bogus. It took bloggers about an hour to figure that out after the piece aired. For more than a week, CBS (also known as See B.S.) refused to retract the obvious hit piece on the GOP president in the heat of his re-election campaign.

See B.S.’s ultimate excuse was immortalized in a headline in The New York Times (another member of the Rolling Stone-CBS media make-it-up conglomerate). The Times quoted another Democrat as describing the memos as “Fake But Accurate.”

Fake but accurate. You can’t make this stuff up — and you don’t have to! Memo to Rolling Stone: Truth really is stranger than fiction. All those Globe columnists didn’t have to pipe it, or lift stuff from the WBUR website. There’s this amazing new invention, and I’m not talking about the Internet. I mean the telephone. It’s amazing, the stuff you can turn up with a phone, and most of the time, all it takes is one or two more calls to see if it’s true….

But now, in a decade we have gone from the “60 Minutes” fake but accurate story to Rolling Stone’s scoop, which turns out to be fake and inaccurate.

I guess you can’t blame the Rolling Stone for not getting the rapist’s side of the story. It’s hard to find somebody who doesn’t exist. His name was, or should I say wasn’t, “Drew.”

But Rolling Stone didn’t even attempt to locate “Drew.” This is what happens when a sheet no one has read since 1972 tries to reinvent itself as a happenin’ website for hep cats. The latest revelation, in the Washington Post, is that the photo of “Drew” that the so-called victim showed her friends was not that of a UVA student.

It was somebody Jackie had gone to high school with. He isn’t a student at UVA and he hasn’t set foot in Charlottesville in six years. I’m guessing his alibi will check out.

But, but … there’s an epidemic of rape. Don’t you remember the Duke lacrosse story? Er, never mind.

Why is that it’s always moonbats getting caught doing this sort of thing? How’d that Lunenburg football team racist graffiti thing work out? These are the same mendacious frauds who call Fox “Faux News” and brag that they’re members of the “reality-based community.”

They’re just not making reality like they used to. Just ask “Drew.”

Listen to Howie every weekday from 3 p.m.-7 p.m. on WMEX AM 1510 and WCRN AM 830.