You are exactly right. What many of these fact check sites do is the equivalent of lying with statistics.
For example, the NRA ran an ad saying “Hillary Clinton does not believe in your right to have a gun in the home for self defense.”
Snopes “fact check” said “Hillary never said that”. TNe NRA did not say she did, they said she believed it. When you look at the totality of her record, the NRA is clearly correct.
I was told by several friends Trump “Lied!” When he said he received the endorsement of ICE.
ICE released a statement saying they are a government agency and do not endorse any candidate.
I responded “Whoever told you this is 100% a liar and pushing a point of view by ommision.”
In fact, The Border Patrol association, which has some 16,500 members did indeed endorse Trump.
Did the agency? Nope and they are barred by law from doing so anyway.
The members of an association, however, are free to vote for and even endorse anyone they wish.
To wit: “In addition, I was just endorsed by ICE. They’ve never endorsed anybody before on immigration. I was just endorsed by ICE. I was just recently endorsed — 16,500 Border Patrol agents.”
Here is their endorsement from March 2016:http://www.bpunion.org/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/1824-national-border-patrol-council-endorses-donald-trump-for-president
Now, here is the endorsement from The National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council represents 5,000 federal immigration officers and law enforcement staff
http://iceunion.org/news/ice-union-endorses-trump
So, did DJT receive the endorsement of our Border Patrol and ICE agents or not?
The question answers itself....
Notice how often a candidate will make a statement about the future. The fact checker will rate it one way or the other.
How is it possible to fact check the future?
Now if a candidate says xyz-thinktank says global warming will exist in the future that can be fact checked.
But to say “There will (or won’t) be global warming in the future is impossible to fact check.