This week Fox News reporter Doug McKelway has repeatedly made a claim that only two months ago he said was false.

It has to do with the EPA's recently proposed rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions from future power plants. In a report on March 27, McKelway acknowledged that the rule applies only to “new U.S. power plants,” saying it “grandfathers in existing coal plants” and “grants a 12-month waiver for plants under construction.”

But yesterday, as we noted, McKelway was on America's Newsroom saying the rule could shut down a quarter of existing coal plants. He said the same thing last night on Special Report, and the companion article posted at FoxNews.com wrongly asserts that “older plants” are subject to the new standard.

Bad memory? Bad intent? Bad journalism, at any rate.

The FoxNews.com article also said 200,000 jobs in the coal industry are threatened by the rule, a claim that Fox Nation turned into a headline. We cannot find the source of this figure and Fox did not cite anyone. Again, the newly proposed rule does not apply to existing coal plants.

In fact, some major coal-powered utilities basically shrugged at the rule, saying they didn't have plans to build any new coal plants anyway. As energy analyst Rob Barnett concluded in recent report, the proposed rule “probably wouldn't shift current investment patterns in the power sector” since “natural-gas plants already have a compelling price advantage.”