Media Research Center executive Tim Graham complained in a Jan. 17 post:
Here’s an easy way to determine a “fact checker” isn’t harping on facts, but on dismissing arguments against the Left. On Tuesday, PolitiFact lined up in solidarity with LGBTQ+ activists by throwing a “Mostly False” at the Instagram account of “Gays Against Groomers.” PolitiFact dislikes this group so strongly that it wouldn’t use their name and blurred it out of their reproduction of the Instagram post.
Worst of all, it’s sad when “fact checkers” undermine themselves with trans lingo like “gender-affirming treatments” when they are obviously gender-REJECTING treatments. They promoted their Madison Czopek article with this tweet:
Experts said gender-affirming treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies are not experimental. More research can be done, but the current standards of care are based on research and evidence.
Gays Against Groomers argued “All ‘gender affirming care’ for children is 100% experimental. There are zero long term studies on the effects the drugs and surgeries will have on them.” This article carried no fewer than 29 uses of “gender-affirming” in all its Orwellian glory.
Yes, the guy who prefers the euphemistic (and arguably Orwellian) term “pro-life” instead of the more accurate “anti-abortion” is mad that others use a term that doesn’t fit with his anti-trans narrative. This being Graham, of course, he didn’t identify anything that was actually egregiously false in the fact-check, complaining instead that “the ‘Experts’ in this article are all LGBTQ activists” — as if homophobic “experts” should be trusted instead.
The real laugher, though, is the headline in which Graham claimed that PolitiFact “malign[ed]” Gays Against Groomers by, um, fact-checking them or something. In fact, it’s hard to malign them because they’re yet another group of right-wing grifters. As Media Matters details, Gays Against Groomers is run by right-wing pro-Trump conspiracy theorists trying to cash in on anti-LGBTQ hate among conservatives (like Graham).
But this is all apparently cool with Graham because the group helps to advance right-wing narratives. Meanwhile, he has his own narrative to advance by lashing out at PolitiFact for issuing a fact-check that offended his transphobic sensibilities:
This article strongly underlines everything people don’t like about so-called “independent fact-checkers.” They aren’t at all “independent” and “facts” aren’t their primary business. Their primary business is reinforcing leftist narratives.
Again, Graham couldn’t identify any fact that was wrong, instead quibbling that it didn’t conform to anti-trans narratives.