Topic: Media Research Center
Let's stipulate from the beginning that the Media Research Center doesn't really care about the welfare of a female student who was allegedly sexually assaulted in a bathroom at a school in Loudoun County, Va. -- she's only a tool to be exploited for two reasons. First, the MRC hates transgender people, and the alleged assailant has been repeatedly described as "a boy in a skirt." Second, and more importantly, the MRC is trying to get Republican Glenn Youngkin elected governor of Virginia, and it believes this issue helps him -- after all, it has previously tried to agitate issues in the county schools regarding gender identity and critical race theory.
Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in an Oct. 12 post:
In a bombshell report from The Daily Wire on Tuesday, reporter Luke Rosiak exposed how the controversial Loudoun County School Board (located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington) allegedly covered up the rape of a 14-year-old girl in the girls’ bathroom at the hands of a boy in a skirt just so they could pass a transgender bathroom policy. It was a truly disturbing story that quickly rose to national attention, yet none of the broadcast networks or the liberal cable outlets gave in any airtime.
Fondacaro didn't explain why anyone outside Loudoun County is supposed to care about a very local incident. But he did make it clear how issue is being immediately exploited on the right, giving out gold stars for it in the process: "Fortunately, the Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson gave the story the airtime it deserved and interviewed Rosiak to get more details. And a few hours later, FNC host Laura Ingraham spoke with Scott Smith, the father of the victim. He was beaten and arrested at a school board meeting for trying to bring up what happened to his daughter."
Tim Graham touted the transphobic angle for his Oct. 13 podcast, making it clear that the MRC and other right-wingers want you to believe that all transgender people are sexual predators in training: "This story is a nightmare for the liberals, because it's a real-life allegation when conservatives often complain that letting "gender-fluid" men or "trans women" into bathrooms or locker rooms could make them unsafe for actual women. This is a story they want to cancel, censor, ignore, squelch, or bury six feet under." Fondacaro followed with whining about "day two of the liberal media’s total television blackout," ridiculously calling Faox News "a more serious new [sic] network" because it pounced on this story.
Fondacaro returned on Oct. 14 to complain that the Washington Post's coverage of the story wasn't as transphobic as he demanded:
Late Wednesday night, The Washington Post became the first liberal news outlet to report the disturbing high school rapes going on in Loudoun County, Virginia. Burying it in their “local” section, the paper ignored key aspects of the story that made it a major scandal for liberal policies: the school board tried to cover it up, had the father of a victim arrested for attempting to speaking out, the attacker was “gender-fluid,” and the school board was trying to get a trans bathroom policy passed.
[...]
But at no point in their article did the three journalists think it was important to note the detail that the attacker was a boy who was wearing a skirt and identified as so-called “gender-fluid.” And while they noted that the second attack happened in an “empty classroom,” they failed to inform readers that the first one happened in a girls’ bathroom.
All of these omitted details were laid out by The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak in his bombshell report that blew the lid off the story on Tuesday.
Of course, Fondacaro didn't mention taht the Daily Wire is as transphobic as the MRC is.
You know the MRC is under orders to exploit this issue when Brent Bozell weighs in on it, and he did so in a softball Oct. 14 appearance on Fox Business:
Appearing on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company Thursday morning, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell denounced the leftist media for refusing to cover two alleged rapes in Loudoun County Virginia high schools directly attributable to the radical transgender bathroom policy pushed by the left-wing school board there. He went through the disturbing timeline that lead up to the shocking alleged crimes.
[...]
He then condemned the left-wing media for steadfastly censoring the story throughout the entire chain of events: “So far, no coverage, no coverage, no coverage by the media that had been all over this issue up until it happened....No coverage whatsoever.”
Bozell apparently didn't explain why this local story warranted national coverage outside of his transphobia and desire to get Youngkin elected.
The same day, Kathleen Krumhansl bizarrely attacked Spanish-language news networks for ignoring the story, even though she could identify no reason why a Spanish-language news network should, behond whining that "Univision goes out of its way to defend transsexuals and the use of non-binary nouns such as (widely rejected) Latinx for continental Latinos as part of its LGBTQ agenda.
Meanwhile, following orders from his boss, MRC executive Tim Graham devoted his Oct. 15 column to summing up the right-wing narrative:
This is a story that any liberal media outlet would want to spike, censor, ignore, squelch, and bury six feet underground. It’s a vivid illustration of what liberals consider a false stereotype. They assume automatically, ideologically, this could never happen -- that a sexual predator would proclaim himself gender-fluid and enter a bathroom or locker room to commit a sex crime.
It’s a right-wing “lie” that suddenly became real.
[...]
The national media are very selective in covering local crimes. Stories of police brutality can quickly become an enormous national cause, but brutality against police is not (unless it was January 6). A horrible abortionist’s malpractice is a local story, but restricting access to abortion anywhere goes national. This shocking assault doesn’t match the LGBTQ “narrative.” In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Bias by omission seems mandatory.
Graham is being disingenuous. The reason why the right-wing scare tactic that transgender people would routinely assault women in bathrooms was considered as "lie" was because no evidence was ever offered that this has happened. And given that all we know about this incident has come from highly biased, transphobic sources, there's a lot we don't know, including about the alleged assailant. But, remember, Graham wants you to believe that all transgender poeple are sexual predators, and they do all their predatory work in public bathrooms.
So important was this issue for the MRC to exploit that Bozell appeared on TV again -- this time on Fox News -- on Oct. 17 to spread the narrative with his buddy Mark Levin:
Appearing on Fox News Channel’s Life, Liberty and Levin Sunday night, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell hammered the leftist media for “aiding and abetting” in the “cover-up” of the devastating impact of radical left-wing policies. Specifically, Bozell detailed the horrific case of a 14-year-old girl being allegedly raped by a male student in a Loudoun County, Virginia high school following the far-left school board implementing a highly controversial transgender bathroom policy.
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Moments later, Bozell denounced the stunning media silence on the story: “What’s the media coverage of the rape? Nothing. What’s the media coverage of the cover-up of the rape to the parents in Loudoun County? Nothing.” He demanded: “Where are the media asking the question, what happened? Does this man’s daughter – has she been raped in this school? Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Why is the school board denying this? No media coverage.”
Naming and shaming the news outlets that refused to cover the terrible consequences of a radical left-wing social agenda, Bozell proclaimed: “What’s the media coverage of this explosive story? Nothing on the networks. Not ABC, NBC, CBS, those 24-hour news network like MSNBC and CNN. Only Fox and The Washington Times and The Washington Post.”
But for all his "naming and shaming," Bozell never explained why media outlets must be forced to dance to the tune of right-wing activists like himself on this issue.He then absurdly claimed that the media are "so in the back pocket with the American Marxist movement." Huh? There's an "American Marxist movement" that is so organized that it has that name?
DFondacaro and Geoffrey Dickens brought in the Youngkin angle in an Oct. 21 post:
All across this country parents are rising up and fighting against leftist policies being forced on them from ultra-liberals in the public school system.
As radio talk show host Mark Levin recently put it, there is a “war against parents and taxpayers by the teachers unions, the educational bureaucracy, school boards, and the Biden administration.”
Well one of those policies (on transgender bathrooms) may have led to two sexual assaults in Loudoun County, Virginia schools, but you wouldn’t know that if you get your news from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN or MSNBC.
Despite it now being a key issue in the Virginia Governor’s race between Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the national news media (outside of outlets like Fox News, OAN and Newsmax) have refused to cover the shocking story.
In short: The MRC wants this story covered because it helps advance right-wing narratives and boosts a certain candidate in Virginia -- not because it's inherently newsworthy outside of the place where it happened.
