On October 11, The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak dropped a bombshell report that exposed how the Loudoun County, Virginia School Board covered up the rape of a 15-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 horrific case of an out-of-control liberal school board putting their leftist agenda ahead of the safety of students.
Since the story broke, the boy was found guilty by a judge, there have been protests and student walkouts and it’s become a key issue in the closely watched Virginia governor’s race. So how much of their primetime programming has CNN and MSNBC spent on this explosive story?
Just 3 minutes, 8 seconds.
MRC analysts looked at 16 nights of primetime (7pm ET - 11pm ET) programming on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News from October 12 (the day after The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak’s report) through October 28 and found an almost complete blackout of the Loudoun sex assault story by CNN and MSNBC.
While Fox News aired 1 hour, 44 minutes, 38 seconds on the Loudoun sex assault case, CNN spent zero seconds on it. MSNBC primetime viewers saw just 3 minutes, 8 seconds total on the topic. On the October 24 edition of MSNBC’s American Voices with Alicia Menendez there was a two-minute, 14 second portion of a segment that included a Loudoun County attorney attacking the “mob mentality” of parents. Then there was a 54-second mention on the October 26 edition of The ReidOut. Guest panelist and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg brought up the case to shoot it down and denounce Republicans.
The following are the relevant exchanges from MSNBC’s primetime coverage:
MSNBC
October 24
American Voices with Alicia MenendezHOST ALICIA MENENDEZ: And now an elected prosecutor in Loudoun County finds herself in the middle of a firestorm over the arrest of a father accused of scuffling with deputies at a school board meeting in June. Dad showed up at the meeting looking for answers after his daughter reportedly was sexually assaulted at school. Right wing media is stoking flames, accusing the prosecutor of targeting the father. However WUSA in Washington reports quote “the prosecutor says deputies were unaware he was the father of an alleged school rape victim when they arrested him and our office did not target the father but accepted a referral for prosecution from the sheriff's office.” Right wing media has seized on the story, bending the truth, radicalizing the far right. For the prosecutor, she is now receiving death threats because of the smear campaign. That prosecutor joins us now, Buta Biberaj, Commonwealth Attorney for Loudoun County. First I want to start with the threats that you are receiving. How did a referral for prosecution from the Sheriff's Office turn into this conspiracy?
LOUDOUN COUNTY COMMONWEALTH ATTORNEY BUTA BIBERAJ: It definitely was an interesting turn of events. As everybody knows, the prosecutor’s office does not investigate cases. That comes from law enforcement. So the Sheriff's Office put together the investigation after the incident on June 22 at the Loudoun County School Board where there was a physical altercation between the man that was arrested as well as law enforcement officers. They chose then to charge him with two misdemeanor offenses, obstruction of justice as well as indicating the fact that he had not complied with their directives. That was referred to as before we ever even knew about the incident with his daughter. So we took forward that case. It was presented to us based on affidavits and critical complaints sworn under oath by the officers.
So we have to accept it as being the truth, which we did and we went forward on that prosecution because of the actions within that board room which if you’ve ever seen the video, it really has the hint of the insurrection on January 6th as far as the mob mentality, the heated rhetoric. It just was a very unsafe situation that the officers found themselves in, and they had to create some opportunity for calmness.
MSNBC
October 26
The ReidOutNEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST MICHELLE GOLDBERG: You know, similarly, Glenn Youngkin and surrogates have been running and demagoging about trans kids in schools and trans bathrooms and there was a horrible rape of a — of a — of a high school girl in Virginia that they’ve been using and sort of exploiting to act as if trans people are predators and we now know today that actually it had sort of nothing to do with, you know, gender fluidity or people using the wrong bathrooms and it was a date rape situation, sort of dating violence situation. And I think it’s good that it’s coming out before the election, so to take in together these two incidents, I think should reveal, you know, maybe not the Big Lie but some of the Big Lies behind the Glenn Youngkin campaign.
