MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is tackling fact-checking site PolitiFact’s analysis of job creation statistics President Barack Obama shared during his State of the Union address this week. In the last 22 months, the President said, businesses have created more than three million jobs, last year creating the highest number of jobs since 2005. The folks at Maddow’s show looked into the numbers as well, finding a January 6th report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics saying that the private section has created 3.2 million jobs since February 2010. PolitiFact also checked off the statement as true. So far, so good.

Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings spoke with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell about President Obama’s record and made the extraordinary claim that President Obama had “some 508 promises that he made to the American people and he has acted on all of them except three.”

One overlooked effect of Politifact’s naming “Republicans Voted To End Medicare” their “Lie Of The Year” is that it gives the false impression that Paul Ryan‘s original plan to end Medicare as we know it was nothing to worry about, and paves the way for acceptance of the newer Ryan-Wyden Medicare “reform” plan. In an interview with Fox Business’s David Asman, liberal radio and TV host Thom Hartmann slammed Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Politifact for their assault on Medicare.

While two years of Republican health care “Lies of the Year” had mostly alienated Politifact from conservative good favor, now those who were happy to cheer on the acknowledgement of “Death Panels” as ridiculous and the “pants on fire” status of people like Glenn Beck and Speaker John Boehner are outraged at what some are calling reputation-ending factual errors in the site’s newly-unveiled award. Yes, Politifact has turned on the Democrats and it has produced a somewhat ugly response. But blasting Politifact for lying about Democratic honesty misses a crucial point: even if the Democrats were lying about Medicare, there were many more interesting and significant lies told in 2010.

On Fox News’s America Live, Alisyn Camerota spoke with Rich Lowry and Christopher Hahn about Politifact’s Lie of The Year, the claim that ‘Republicans voted to end Medicare’, which Mediaite’s own Tommy Christopher says is actually not a lie at all.

Since announcing “Republicans voted to end Medicare” as its “Lie Of The Year” yesterday, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-check outfit Politifact.com has faced more blowback than a chronic spitter on a Ducati. While they apparently think this is just griping by the left, even the conservative National Review says they got it wrong. What Politifact doesn’t seem to realize is that this wasn’t just a wrong decision, it was an irresponsible one that undercuts their own, and journalism’s, duty to serve the public.

Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website Politifact.com revealed its 2011 “Lie Of The Year” today, which is the essentially true claim that Republicans voted to end Medicare. While Politifact is taking heavy fire from liberals over its ridiculous decision, the site’s editor Bill Adair took to the airwaves to explain the award, and told a whopper of a lie himself on CBS News’ The Early Show Tuesday morning, while also demonstrating the central fallacy of the award, all in the same sentence.

Michele Bachmann appeared on Meet the Press earlier today, and in the middle of talking about her chances in Iowa next month, David Gregory brought up the uncomfortable exchange she had with Newt Gingrich during last week’s Republican debate. Gingrich accused Bachmann of “not getting her facts correct,” and Bachmann responded by calling his comments “outrageous,” insisting she is a serious candidate for the presidency.

Just in time to help shill for the ill-conceived Ryan-Wyden Medicare “reform” plan, fact-checking website Politifact.com has nominated Democratic claims about Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare-destroying budget for its “Lie of the Year” award. Liberal radio and TV host Thom Hartmann called the Pulitzer Prize-winning site out over the move, applying a blowtorch to the site’s trousers on Wednesday’s The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann.

On Monday night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart responded to Politifact giving him a “Pants on Fire”, by unloading on The History Channel for their historically inaccurate programming. “Apparently the clip we showed was off by around 66 years!” Stewart exclaimed. “For this mistake, I was awarded the fact-checking site Politifact.com’s lowest grade possible “Pants on Fire.”

Political fact-checker Politifact has called out Jon Stewart this week for citing an inaccurate segment from the History Channel to refute Fox News’s War on Christmas. The video had noted that “On Dec. 25, 1789, the United States Congress sat in session and continued to stay open on Christmas Day for most of the next 67 years.” Politfact called this claim “flat-out wrong” consulting the US Senate’s historical record, and pegged the late-night comedian’s assertion “pants-on-fire”, which is a harsher judgment than when they last went after him over claims about Fox News’s viewers being misinformed.

On Friday’s The O’Reilly Factor, Rick Perry was questioned about his controversial new ad criticizing President Obama for an out-of-context comment he made about Chinese investments and spinning it as Obama calling Americans “lazy.” “So is that a fair ad?” Bill O’Reilly asked the Texas Governor. O’Reilly later played the president’s statement in full and found Obama hadn’t really said what Perry’s ad had claimed.

In May of 2009, the Times’ Deborah Solomon interviewed pollster and messaging expert Frank Luntz for her weekly “Questions” column. She challenged him immediately over the phrase “Washington Takeover” in a 28-page memo titled “The Language of Health Care.” Luntz admitted that he didn’t know if “takeover” was a correct description, which Politifact rated Luntz’s “takeover” its Lie of the Year. Though Luntz’s reputation remained unscathed.

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Texas-sized mouth garners gushers of media attention in the opening days of his presidential campaign, fact-checking website Politifact has been working overtime to ride to Perry’s rescue, rating statements that Perry alternately “threatened to” or “wanted to” secede as “false.”

West Wing Report‘s Paul Brandus points out that it was on this date in 1862 that President Abraham Lincoln laid to rest any doubt about the right of states to secede. Politifact concedes that point, yet ignores it in analyzing the accusations against Perry.

We missed this when it came out a couple days ago so thank goodness it caught Andrew Sullivan’s eye because it may be the funniest official statement from a company ever. In her big Newsweek interview, Sarah Palin told a story that used Slim Jims to illustrate rising food prices. PolitiFact was then asked to determine if her story was accurate and got a comment from Jim himself!

Ok, not really. But it was from the company and it is hilarious.

In case Jon Stewart hasn’t made this perfectly clear several times, Jon Stewart appeared on Fox News to debate Chris Wallace on his program two weeks ago, where he was accused of being an “activist” rather than a comedian, and was accused of repeating falsehoods by claiming Fox News viewers are “consistently the most uninformed.” Stewart had copped to the mistake with a segment dedicated to Fox News’ falsehoods, but this was apparently not enough: he gave Fox News his entire second segment yet again, concluding, with Wallace’s words, that they are “crybabies.”

The normally sharp Howard Kurtz really missed the boat in his rundown of the recent Jon Stewart/Chris Wallace interview, and Politifact-ual aftermath. On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, he and his panel missed the mark on Stewart’s response to Politifact’s charge that his assertion about Fox News viewers was false, and when panelist Aaron Barnhart tried to bring up the crucial edit of an exchange about Fox exec Bill Sammon, Kurtz promised to go back to it, but never did.

Jon Stewart‘s fiery debate with Chris Wallace on Fox News last Sunday is still generating fodder for the Daily Show, especially now that PolitiFact, the non-partisan correction organization, called Stewart’s statement that Fox News viewers were “consistently misinformed” false. But instead of merely apologizing humbly and moving on, Stewart spent most of the segment highlighting false claims made by Fox News over the years.

The Truth-O-Meter has rendered its verdict, and Jon Stewart‘s come up short. PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking site, has evaluated Stewart’s statement in an interview on Fox News where he asked, “who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers?” Stewart said to Fox’s Chris Wallace. “The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.”

The ongoing feud between Rachel Maddow and PolitiFact has already caused migraines for some, and don’t expect relief anytime soon. PolitiFact’s editor Bill Adair appeared on Reliable Sources this morning to defend his website’s original assertion that Maddow’s statements on the Wisconsin budget were untrue, and also to address Maddow’s request for a correction.

On Thursday night’s Rachel Maddow Show, eponymous anchor Rachel Maddow tore into Pulitzer-winner Politifact for the site’s takedown of her claims about Wisconsin’s budget. This immediately horrified me, as I have referenced Politifact’s take several times this week. Upon further review, though, I think I’m in the clear, and somehow, both Maddow and Politifact are wrong. Stay with me here.

Rachel Maddow‘s corrections segment, “Debunction Junction,” just corrected a correction. Maddow was accused of spreading false information by watchdog site Politifact recently when she claimed “Wisconsin is just fine” and on the road to a surplus, and the site attacked her for omitting information about the state’s budget shortfalls. Tonight, she took down the claim with video evidence and then some, saving some time to defend Shepard Smith and address personal attacks on her for being gay.

Rachel Maddow weighed in on the Wisconsin union protests and suggested that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was stripping unions of power primarily to weaken the Democratic party in future elections. Any crisis related to the budget, Maddow believed, was either fabricated, or only true as a result of Walker’s own tax giveaways to business. The nonpartisan website PolitiFact declared such assertions to be “false.”

When asked by David Letterman about network bias, Rachel Maddow responded that “I of course think [MSNBC] is much more true than Fox is true,” pointing out that Fox News had reported, multiple times, that “the New Black Panther Party decided the election for Barack Obama.”

A bold claim. So bold, in fact, that it prompted PolitiFact – “a project of the St. Petersburg Times to help you find the truth in politics” – to investigate her claim.

There are a lot of lies told each calendar year, and more so during election years. So as 2010 comes to an end, PolitiFact looked back and determined which one they thought should be their Lie of the Year. And the winner (or loser?) is: “A government takeover of health care,” a phrase they say was instrumental in stopping “President Barack Obama‘s ambitious plan to overhaul America’s health insurance system.”