He follows up by writing that, “Chrysler previously built Jeeps in China—and the move would not be unusual. Ford Motor Co. builds Ford vehicles in China for Chinese buyers and General Motors Co. builds Buicks in China for local consumers.” Such context, however, sidesteps the fact that Chrysler is not “moving” jobs to China at all, but is, rather, expanding Jeep production both there and here in the US. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, told Bloomberg Businessweek on Monday, with the ad, the Romney campaign is “inviting a false inference. It is literally accurate and inferentially false. We also call it ‘not the whole story.’” In a post published a day after the articles in the Detroit newspapers, FactCheck.org affirmed that it is “misleading to suggest that Chrysler’s decision to expand into China will cost US jobs—especially after the company has said it would have no impact on its US operations.”

In his News piece, Shepardson waits until the ninth paragraph to address this misleading implication, and then only via an Obama campaign spokesperson (thus suggesting that this is a matter of political opinion, rather than a fact that can, and has, been checked). It takes all the way to the sixteenth paragraph before the story says that Chrysler is “flatly denying it has any plans to move Jeep output to China from the United States.” By this point, readers may well not know what, or whom, to believe.

In contrast, National Journal also analyzed the Romney ad on Sunday, and gave its piece this crystal clear headline: “Romney ad wrongly implies Chrysler is sending US jobs to China.” Reporter Jill Lawrence followed with a strong, direct lede: “Republican nominee Mitt Romney is running a new TV ad that implies Chrysler is planning to move U.S. auto jobs to China, though that is not the case.” Lawrence later wrote that, especially following so closely after Romney’s Ohio speech, the ad “could lead viewers to conclude Chrysler was indeed going to shift Jeep production to China.” The Detroit newspapers made the same points, but the News in particular did it in a delayed fashion that made the story murky. (The News did better in a piece published yesterday—with the benefit of a strong, clear statement from Chrysler’s CEO—but, as National Journal demonstrated, that sort or work can and should be done the first time around).

For all that, the News on Sunday did point out many of the ad’s disjointed claims, including the same points the Free Press made, but adding, for example, that while the News endorsed Romney, its editorial specifically criticized Romney’s “wrong-headedness on the auto bailout.” Shephardson also had a nicely succinct way of narrating the political history of the bailouts, including the all-too-easily forgotten fact that they originated before President Obama took office.

Unlike the Detroit papers, the National Journal piece cited and linked to Romney’s famous 2008 New York Times op-ed, ”Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, which, as Lawrence paraphrased, “said the companies should be required to rely on private capital until after the bankruptcy. But most analysts agree there was none available in the depths of the recession, and without the bailout the two companies would have likely died—possibly taking down with them the supply chain and Ford.” The mention here of the supply chain’s influence on the one member of the Big Three that didn’t take federal loans is a relief: when debating the wisdom of the bailouts, the ground-shaking effect that Chrysler and GM’s death would have had on the other major player in the US auto industry is often neglected by journalists.

Anna Clark is CJR's correspondent for Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. A 2011 Fulbright fellow, Clark was written for The Guardian, Grantland and Salon; blogs at Isak; and can be found on Twitter @annaleighclark. She lives in Detroit.