MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow lectured journalists on fact checking on her Tuesday show while misattributing a slew of Mitt Romney quotes, according to Politico.
Paraphrasing Romney's remarks from the May 4 speech, Maddow then said: "Sure, President Obama has brought unemployment down, but anything over 4 percent is an Obama failure."
Then, speaking for herself, Maddow said: "Mitt Romney says anything over 4 percent is a failure of the Obama administration, then two-and-a-half weeks later says his own goal is 6 percent unemployment."
That is incorrect -- which is to say, false. Mitt Romney did not say that unemployment over 4 percent is a failure of the Obama administration. He said it was not cause for celebration. Furthermore, in his interview with Halperin, Romney did not say that his own goal of 6 percent unemployment would be cause for celebration either. He merely said that that was his own goal… Maddow did not get the facts right. Instead, she invented her own facts -- specifically, she invented a statement and attributed it to Mitt Romney, despite the fact that he never made it.
Maddow said her criticism of Romney was in response to a challenge White House spokesman Jay Carney issued reporters to "not buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration."
Bookending her segment with an allusion to Carney, Maddow cited Romney's statements about unemployment expectations as "a test for the Washington press corps."… She didn’t get it right.