The TV had been on for an hour, and Fox News journalist Martha McCullum had yet to recount the “The Five Ws” of journalism vis-a-vis the case of “American swimmer Ryan Lochte being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro.”

What happened?
Who did that?
When did it take place?
Where did it take place?
Why did that happen?

Then McCullum, (still infinitely superior to the put-upon Gretchen Carlson) and her Fox New friends, proceeded to make light of the alleged behavior engaged in by US athletes while representing their country abroad, at the Olympic games in Rio.

Boys will be boys was the angle. At 32, Lochte is considered a boy.

How libertine.

The alleged facts via the AP:

A Brazilian police official told The Associated Press that American swimmer Ryan Lochte fabricated a story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro.

The official, who has direct knowledge of the investigation, spoke on the condition of anonymity Thursday because he was not authorized to speak about an ongoing probe.

He said that around 6 a.m. on Sunday, Lochte, along with fellow swimmers Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen, stopped at a gas station in Barra da Tijuca, a suburb of Rio where many Olympic venues are located. One of the swimmers tried but failed to open the door of an outside bathroom.

A few of the swimmers then pushed on the door and broke it. A security guard appeared and confronted them, the official said.

The official says the guard was armed with a pistol, but he never took it out or pointed it at the swimmers.

According to the official, the gas station manager then arrived. Using a customer to translate, the manager asked the swimmers to pay for the broken door. After a discussion, they did pay him an unknown amount of money and then left.

The official says that swimmers Conger and Bentz, who were pulled off a plane going back to the United States late Wednesday, told police that the robbery story had been fabricated.

Lochte first lied about the robbery to his mother, Ileana Lochte, who spoke with reporters, the police official said. That led to news coverage of the incident and prompted police attention. …

UPDATE (8/18): The New York Post catches up with me:

Ryan Lochte open his mouth. And when you hear what comes tumbling out, it all makes perfect sense. … That’s the worst part of what Lochte and his stable of stumble-bumbling swimmer pals have done the past few days, now that it’s apparent that whatever might have happened to them late one night — actually, early one morning — in Rio, it wasn’t exactly the way Lochte described it the first time around. In fact, it seems apparent that Lochte and his cohorts in chaos — Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen, all swimmers representing the US in a decidedly different way than Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps did — were using the old “robbed-at-gunpoint” chestnut as cover for what was apparently a gas station encounter with a security guard and, quite hilariously, a bathroom door. …