TATTLE LIKES George Clooney.

He likes basketball, he's a journalist's son and, by and large, he makes good movies.

Clooney also is highly critical of "the media," which is not necessarily a bad thing.

He thinks it's wrong when the media print celebrity rumor and innuendo as fact.

So do we. That's why we always print it as rumor and innuendo.

He says a news story used to require "two reliable sources, and that doesn't seem to exist as much anymore."

Clooney spoke yesterday at the London Film Festival, where one documentary in the lineup reveals how easily some newspapers can be duped into running fake stories about the famous.

The makers of "Starsuckers" fed false tips to British tabloids and then watched as some, though not all, ran them as legitimate news. The hoaxes included a story about Amy Winehouse's trademark beehive hairdo catching fire.

That's ridiculous. Everyone knows her beehive became infested with yellowjackets.

"Starsuckers" director Chris Atkins said he "wanted to answer one simple question . . . How far will tabloid journalists go in the pursuit of their stories?"

At Tattle, we'll occasionally walk across the room.

Clooney, no stranger to media attention, said he has sympathy for journalists as newspaper staffs shrink and online competition grows. But he says accurate reporting has suffered.

"The problem is that there's so little reporting anymore . . . Somebody will write a story and it will be in 1,800 different outlets from one person's story," Clooney said during a news conference to promote his new military comedy, "The Men Who Stare at Goats," which will now be mentioned in the same 1,800 outlets without Clooney lifting a finger.

Clooney said he understood the pressures journalists face.

"It's a tricky thing. You're going to have to sell papers. I get it," he said.

But he also said Internet "sourcing" is out of control.

"[A story will] be false, and you'll go, 'It's not true,' " he said. "And they go, 'We're not saying that, we're saying that a London tabloid has said it.' They're just reprinting and reprinting things that aren't necessarily true.

"I understand the problem with it; I understand why it happens. But it certainly is an issue."

All true.

Clooney's gripe would be more legit to us, however, if he still talked with legitimate newspapers trying to stay in business.