Why Conservatives Mock PolitiFact

Several days ago Representative AOC posted a picture of herself during a visit to an immigrant detention center last year when she was still a candidate. She was nearly doubled-over in grief in front of a chain-link fence giving the impression that seeing children in cages was to much for her to bare. A few days later conservative sites posted photos takes from a different angle. These showed that there was nothing on the other side of the fence but an access road with some parked cars and a nondescript building in the distance. There was not a child to be seen. This gave rise to an Internet meme about AOC crying in front of a parking lot.

Enter the "nonpartisan" fact-checking site PolitFact. They decided to do a fact-check on this but they didn't fact-check AOC's original picture which implied she was crying over children, nor did they fact-check the conservative sites which accurately described the pictures. Instead they fact-checked the Internet meme's use of the word "parking lot". They carefully showed pictures documenting that what was in the background was cars parked on a road rather than on a parking lot. Based on this, they rated the meme false.Left unrated was the fact that AOC was weeping in front of a mass of pavement and parked cars.

This is a perfect example of why conservatives mock PolitiFact. Any real fact-checking would have made AOC look bad. They managed to phrase the question in such a way as to ignore the whole AOC question and concentrate on the work "parking lot". Even then, a fair site would have rated the meme mostly true. After all, she was in front of cars on pavement. But they managed to ignore the context of the picture in such a way to give the impression that AOC did not fake her histrionics. More people will see the false rating and not bother to read the details so by framing it this way they covered for AOC.