Topic: Media Research Center
We've established that the Media Research Center has been aggressively hyping the alleged sexual assault of a student in a school in Loudoun County, Va., in order to forward right-wing transphobia narrativfes (since the alleged assailant was "a boy in a skirt") and to advance the candidacy of Republican Virginia governor candidate Glenn Youngkin. As the election grew closer, the MRC ramped up the manufactured outrage. Kristine Marsh ranted in an Oct. 24 post that, among other things, complained that Youngkin was being called out for "seizing on" the assault and managed to work in the hoary old bogeyman of George Soros:
Sunday night MSNBC went all out smearing parents in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Loudoun County as domestic terrorists. On Alicia Menendez’s American Voices, the MSNBC host and her far-left guest cruelly painted parents standing up to school boards, including a father whose daughter was allegedly raped by a transgender student on campus because of the schools' liberal policies, as radical rioters who were like the January 6 “insurrectionists.”
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She then introduced her guest, Soros-funded Loudoun County prosecutor Buta Biberaj, who sought jail time for a dad who erupted at a Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting in June over his daughter's alleged rape by a transgender student that the school lied about and covered up. In MSNBC’s twisted logic, the liberal prosecutor was the real victim of this story:
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Biberaj pinned blame on the Sheriff's office. Like MSNBC, she lacked any sympathy for the actual victimized student or her father.
First: Marsh's wild accusation of a "cover-up" rests on a Fox News story by Sam Dorman -- whom we caught hurling biased gotcha questions in his stint as a CNSNews.com intern, so he's hardly an objective source -- highlighting an email from the school district superintendent to the school board alerting them to the incident; the school board told Fox that the email lacked specific details and the board did not receive further updates on the incident. Some "cover-up," eh?
Second: Does Marsh or anyone else at the MRC care about the "victimized student" beyond her usefulness as a partisan political tool? Unlikely.
Nicholas Fondacaro cranked out another one of those "the non-right-wing media isn't reporting stories that advance the right-wing agenda" articles in an Oct. 25 item -- and, of course, praising his favorite biased outlets for exploiting it:
In Virginia on Monday, the Smith family announced the Loudoun County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court had found the “gender-fluid” boy who raped their daughter in a girl’s bathroom guilty. With the second alleged rape making its way through the legal system, the liberal broadcast networks continued their total blackout of the story, including the cover-up by the liberal school board. And before the news broke, the Associated Press tried to cast doubt on the validity of the case.
Instead of reporting on the case many radical leftists claimed wasn’t real (including Barack Obama), ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all hyped how Washington Democrats were possibly close to a deal on President Biden’s massive spending agenda. They also put Facebook under more scrutiny, and NBC went off on the military coup in Sudan.
Of course, The Daily Wire, the outlet that initially broke the cover-up story, was all over the new developments.
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Fox News Channel, was also the only major TV network to give airtime to the ruling.
Fondacaro -- who lies about many things -- is lying about Obama. He didn't say the incident itself "wasn't real"; according to the right-wing tweet to which he linked, Obama called out "these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage, the right-wing media's pedals to juice their ratings" surrounding the Virginia election -- which is true, seeing as how Fondacaro and his buddies are paid to do just that.
Fondacaro also falsely accused the Associated Press of suggesting that the assault claim was false because a story called it a "murky case." In fact, it's a murky case because juvenile records are typically sealed and not made public, and the only statements that have been made public about it have come from the father of the alleged victim -- hardly an objective source.
Fondacaro followed up the next day with another story demanding national coverage of a local issue:
The Loudoun County “gender-fluid” rape story was a raging fire the liberal media were desperately pretending wasn’t happening as their candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe (D) was floundering. But on Tuesday, county high school students staged a walkout to protest the liberal school board that tried to cover up the attacks. The walkout and a guilty ruling against the attacker went unmentioned by the broadcast networks.
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While the liberal broadcast networks were trying to keep the damaging story under wraps, Fox News Channel Special Report anchor Bret Baier dove right into it.
Fondacaro failed in his job as a researcher by refusinbg to tell readers about Fox News' political slant -- if he can tag other networks as "liberal," there's no reason for him not to identify Fox News as "conservative" -- or explaining the channel's motivation in pushing the story in trying to get Youngkin elected.
A couple hours later, Fondacaro was ranting about an even more obscure story the "liberal" networks weren't reporting on:
As NewsBusters has been reporting in recent days, the broadcast networks were going all-in on trying to keep Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s dwindling chances to win the gubernatorial in Virginia alive. But while they take McAuliffe’s side against Republican Glenn Youngkin, they were leaving him completely unvetted. Luckily we had The Daily Wire to investigate the Democrat’s ties to a law firm that fights against rape victims and with which he has taken a paycheck as recently as this election year.
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By ignoring McAuliffe’s ties to this firm, the networks were flaunting just how politically driven they were. Because if he was a Republican, they would be all over it. But they want to keep the Virginia governor's mansion in Democratic hands.
Fondacaro did not describe the Daily Wire as "going all-in on trying to keep Republican Glenn Youngkin's chances to win the gubernatorial in Virginia alive." Perhaps he sould explain the justification for that biased, dishonest writing someday. And while he's at it, he should also explain why he's flaunting just how politically driven he is by wanting to put the Virginia governor's mansion in Democratic hands -- blatant electioneering that may very well be a violation of the MRC's nonprofit tax status.
On Oct. 27, Fondacaro was screeching about how others have pointed out how Republicans (like himself) are politically exploiting a crime:
The liberal TV news blackout of the “gender-fluid” rapes in Loudoun County, Virginia was finally broken Wednesday evening by NBC Nightly News and correspondent Catie Beck. But it was anything but fair as the network took to suggesting the cases and the school district were being exploited by parents as well as the state and national Republican Party as they looked for an upset in the tight race for governor and beyond.
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ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC were still holding strong to the blackout. NBC didn't give an explanation to why it took them so long to mention the rapes despite discussing the Virginia election on Sunday and Tuesday.
Fondacaro still has yet to explain why a local crime must be treated as a national story outside of the fact that drawing attention to it might help his preferred candidate get elected. But he's a right-wing hack, not a legitimate "media researcher."
