Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry's new TV commercial is based on a lie. Will reporters say so?

The ad starts with a Barack Obama quote: ''We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.''

To which Perry responds:  ''Can you believe that? That's what our president thinks is wrong with America? That Americans are lazy? That's pathetic. It's time to clean house in Washington.''

Now, it would be rather unusual for a president to say that.

Obama didn't.

The quote comes from an event where Obama spoke about efforts to woo corporations to do more business in America. Obama's response was that government should being doing more to improve the business environment for corporations--to "make it easier for foreign investors to build a plant in the United States."

If anything, Obama is saying the government has been lazy in its approach to pleasing corporations. As MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell explained last night, this is the kind of thing you can imagine coming from the mouths of Republican politicians and candidates.

So how are media doing fact-checking Perry's claim?

Today (11/18/11) the New York Times has a piece headlined "Perry's Latest Attacks Distort Obama's Words and Past." That's pretty good--though it's a little strange to see the paper's somewhat passive description of Perry's mendacity: "Some of his recent attacks have drifted into the realm of falsehood." How on Earth did they drift into that realm?

But the piece is an improvement over the Times' take on the ad a day earlier, written by the same reporter (Richard Oppel). That article led with the news that that the  commercial "takes a sharper tone" than Perry's previous ads, and that it "may be an effort to shift attention from Mr. Perry's recent stumbles by attacking the White House."

In the sixth paragraph, readers are finally told that "the ad takes Mr. Obama's remark out of context."

Mitt Romney has also been twisting Obama's "lazy" comment, with little push back from the press. Another Times piece described Romney's attack:

Mr. Romney's critique sounded a familiar theme in the Republican primary contest--that the president is out of touch with the ordinary American worker.

Later in the article, an Obama spokesperson says Romney is taking the comments out of context--which is the kind of thing journalists should point out themselves.

In the Washington Post, Chris Cilizza reported the Perry ad this way:

His latest ad, which began airing Wednesday in Iowa and on national cable stations, takes Obama to task for a recent comment that America has grown "a little bit lazy" in attracting foreign investment.

He added:

Romney also took issue with the comment this week, accusing Obama of calling Americans lazy. "I don't think that describes Americans," he said.

And once again, an Obama spokesperson steps in, near the end of the piece, to try and set things straight.

If this is any indication of how the press is going to handle campaign season lying, things look pretty bleak.

One bright spot came on the CBS Evening News (11/17/11):

SCOTT PELLEY: As we get pulled into this campaign season, you'll be seeing a lot of ads by the candidates. And from time to time, we're going to offer some background on the claims that all the candidates are making. This one caught our eye today. Texas Governor Rick Perry is running a spot about what he describes as an outrageous comment made by President Obama.

OBAMA: We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.

GOV. RICK PERRY (R), TEXAS: Can you believe that? That's what our president thinks is wrong with America, that Americans are lazy? That's pathetic.

PELLEY: That would be pathetic. So we hunted down the full comments the president made during an interview Saturday at the Pacific Economic Summit. He'd been asked about U.S. businesses marketing themselves overseas.

OBAMA: There are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity. Our stability, our openness, our innovative, free-market culture. But, you know, we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted, well, people will want to come here, and we aren't out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.

PELLEY: There it is in context.

There--that wasn't so hard, was it?

UPDATE: Syntactical glitch in first sentence fixed.

MSNBC host has been receiving praise for going after his NBC bosses--as the L.A. Times noted today (4/29/11):

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell escalated attacks on NBC executives this week. On his MSNBC show the Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell Wednesday night, he accused NBC (another division of his own company) of allowing the Celebrity Apprentice host Donald Trump to spread "racist" lies against President Obama in demanding that Obama produce his long-form birth certificate....

"NBC has created a monster who is using his NBC fame to spew hatred reeking with racist overtones and undertones," O'Donnell said on his show.

This isn't the first time O'Donnell has done something like this--remember that when the news surfaced about GE's tax avoidance, O'Donnell slammed the company--which still owns a hefty chunk of NBC.

O'Donnell recently did an interview with Howard Kurtz of the Daily Beast, where he expressed frustration with the cable television game and said, "I can't look up and imagine myself doing this for three years."

At this rate, he might not have to worry about hanging around that long.

You may have heard about the New York Times report (3/25/11) explaining that General Electric made $14 billion in worldwide profits in 2010--and paid the federal government exactly nothing in taxes. The Times explained this is "based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore."

Despite the Comcast purchase, GE is still a part owner of NBC and MSNBC--the latter conventionally thought to be a liberal-leaning outlet. So did they say much about a giant corporation keeping profits offshore in order to avoid paying taxes? Not really; Paul Abrams pointed out at the Huffington Post (3/26/11), host Lawrence O'Donnell deserves credit for going after the company.

What about NBC? Checking Nexis doesn't turn up much, though I did come across this conversation between Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb on the Today show, which is apparently about various Prince William-Kate Middleton royal wedding memorabilia (3/24/11):

KOTB: That's the top of the cake, so if you cut it....

GIFFORD: Oh my gosh. They've never looked so unattractive. That's terrible.

KOTB: Well, anyway, the baker, Michelle Wibowo, she did it, spent eight hours on it.

GIFFORD: Oh, sorry, baker.

KOTB: All right.

GIFFORD: Sorry. It's lovely. Gosh.

KOTB: And if you need a place to put your cake, just--how about the Will and Kate refrigerator by GE? Who's part owner of this company.

GIFFORD: Yes.

KOTB: Yes.

For the record, there really is a GE refrigerator honoring Will and Kate.

Outside the GE media world, ABC's Jake Tapper turned in a good report on ABC World News.

UPDATE:  Over at ThinkProgress Zaid Jilani notes that one outlet has expressed a keen interest in GE's tax avoidance: the Fox News Channel.

Isabel Macdonald, a former FAIR staff member, published an article in the Nation (10/7/10) revealing that undocumented workers had been landscaping Lou Dobbs' Florida home and looking after his daughter's show horses.  As a hardline commentator on the issue of "illegal immigrant workers," one would think Dobbs would be a little embarrassed about this discovery.

When Dobbs and Macdonald appeared on MSNBC's Last Word (10/7/10) yesterday to debate the issue, Macdonald pointed out that "Lou Dobbs, who has made himself an emblem of this get-tough approach to immigration...had been exploiting undocumented labor."

Dobbs attempted to sidestep the issue by claiming that he had never "directly or indirectly hired an undocumented worker." To which host Lawrence O'Donnell replied, "Someone hired by your landscaping contractor had an undocumented worker on your property . That, Lou, is indirect."

Dobbs, though, had his own definition of "indirectly": "intentionally hiring a contractor...for the specific purpose of hiring an illegal immigrant."

Dobbs, Macdonald said, has criticized others in the past for not verifying contract workers: "[In] 2007, you called employers ridiculous for insisting that they should not have to be held accountable for their contractors' employees."

In his debate with Macdonald, however, Dobbs claimed that not only was he not obligated to find out the immigration status of those who were working for him, he was legally prevented from doing so: "The reality is this: There is a law against you or me inquiring about a legal status for a person in this country.... That's a violation of their rights."

Dobbs is scheduled to speak at a Tea Party conference this weekend.