THEY PUT A VEGAS TRIBUTE ACT ON THE OBIT. THEN THEY APOLOGIZED TO DOLLY'S FAMILY.

LAS VEGAS — Dolly Parton died Tuesday. The network that still sells itself as the grown-up table put a Las Vegas impersonator on the air and called it coverage.

Folks, that is not a glitch. That is a newsroom that could not tell 9 to 5 from a red-carpet decoy.

The New York Post has the exclusive. During Laura Coates Live, about twelve hours after the family announced the death, they aired a photo of Kelly Vohnn, a 58-year-old tribute artist. Friends started blowing up her phone. She thought she was watching the country bury an icon. Instead she was watching herself.

The picture was not some archive deep-cut of Parton. It was Vohnn on a December Las Vegas carpet for Song Sung Blue. Kate Hudson. Hugh Jackman. A woman who has spent a career celebrating Dolly, never claiming to be her. "To be clear, I have never represented myself as being Dolly ever in my life," she told the Post. She has always been the tribute act. Somebody in Atlanta could not tell the difference.

Thursday they handed the Post a sentence. "We regret the error and apologize to the Parton family." That is the whole cup. No name on the chyron. No explanation of how a death package for the most photographed woman in country music grabbed a Vegas look-alike and ran it. Vohnn said it for them: "Somebody at CNN really messed up and didn't do their research." She felt sorry for Dolly. Over a whole career of real images, they picked the one that was not her.

Parton died at 80 at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center after a brief battle with cancer, her team told Fox News Digital. Surrounded by loved ones. The diner does not need a lecture on who she was. The tribute artist in Vegas was already heartbroken, raising a glass at home, too wrecked to call the network herself. Fox 5 Vegas had her on as a local who spent years doing Dolly the honest way: as a fan, not a fake. Then the "fact-checkers" put her face on the funeral.

Decaf Tears' read: they will fact-check your uncle's Facebook in twelve minutes. They could not fact-check Dolly Parton. They ordered a legend and served a decoy. Then they apologized to the family in a clause. The percolator is not confused. The wig was not the scandal. The newsroom was.