New York, Thursday (F.A. wire) - In a startling turn of events, a joint investigation by The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times, has discovered that many elements of the recent journalistic fraud scandal and subsequent resignations at The New York Times were partly or wholly fabricated.

As as result, doubt has been cast on the Times’ assertions of inaccurate journalism, internal strife, and the recent “resignations” of top-ranking editors Howell Raines and Gerald M. Boyd.

“We found ourselves becoming increasingly aware that all the ‘facts’ of the Times crisis were being broken by the Times itself,” said Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr., referring to the recent scandal over the allegedly fraudulent articles by dismissed Times reporter Jayson Blair. “Since day one, we’ve had to take the Times’ word about how unreliable its word was.”

“How can a paper with its credibility so damaged by its accounts of journalistic fraud be trusted to report truthfully about those accounts? Particularly when it was the only real source for news about the scandals. It just didn’t smell right.”

Others have pointed out that the Times has been devoting a staggering large amount of ink to reporting on the scandal, filling page after page with possibly erroneous reports about its alleged wrongdoings. One reporter said he was uncomfortable with the fact that the Times seemed to have “a monopoly on the biggest journalism story of the decade. They’ve go all the access. And that’s never a good thing.”

For now, the Times has managed to brush off any suggestions that the account of Jayson Blair’s misleading reportage might have been distorted, but there have been repeated suggestions that Mr. Blair might have actually been considerably more truthful and diligent than the public has been led to believe. Even though Mr. Blair confessed to pretending to be in places he wasn’t and filing false “first-hand” accounts simply by rewriting stories from other sources, Boston Globe editor Martin Baron points out that, “We only have the word of the Times and one of its discredited reporters to go on there, so you have to take it with a grain of salt.”

Others have cast doubt upon today’s announced resignations by the Times’ top brass. “We only know this from the Times itself, so I’m not comfortable believing that the resignations ever happened,” said a high-ranking editor at the L.A. Times. “Frankly, I’m not convinced that Howell Raines ever was the editor over there. I mean, how do we know that? Who told us? Consider the source.”