Checking The MSM's Fact Checkers

Verdict: They're liars. This is a small sampling. It's a long article.

Here is just one example of the literally dozens of ‘fact check’ articles that have been breathlessly rushed out overnight after Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican convention. 

This one is from the stunningly ‘fact free’ propagandists at the Associated Press:

FACT CHECK: Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and JACK GILLUM | August 30, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — Laying out the first plans for his party’s presidential ticket, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took some factual shortcuts Wednesday night when he attacked President Barack Obama’s policies on Medicare, the economic stimulus and the budget deficit…

The AP goes on to, once again, falsely claim that Obama-Care does not $716 billion dollars from Medicare, and that Obama’s stimulus was not a matter of political patronage and corporate welfare.
But here is how they present their latest big lie:

RYAN: Said Obama misled people in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis., by making them think a General Motors plant there threatened with closure could be saved. "A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: `I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year."

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office and well before he enacted a more robust auto industry bailout that rescued GM and Chrysler and allowed the majority of their plants – though not the Janesville facility – to stay in operation. Ryan himself voted for an auto bailout under President George W. Bush that was designed to help GM, but he was a vocal critic of the one pushed through by Obama that has been widely credited with revitalizing both GM and Chrysler…

Unfortunately, there are several problems with the AP’s ‘facts.’

First of all, the Janesville plant did not close in December 2008, it closed in April 2009. But some ‘fact checkers’ quibble that, since GM announced it was going to close the Janesville plant in December of 2008, that is close enough. But the fact is the Janesville plant did not close until April 2009.

Also, it’s clear from Obama’s press release and speech back in February 2008 that Obama did indeed mislead people "by making them think a General Motors plant there threatened with closure could be saved."