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. The network bit its tongue, however, when news broke of how the Loudoun County (Virginia) School Board covered up two alleged sexual assaults perpetrated by a student who used the women's bathroom under the guise of "identifying as a woman."
The network's silence on the cover-up, and also on the arrest of the student who sexually assaulted two minors, as revealed by The Daily Wire (and confirmed by the county sheriff's office) stands in stark contrast to the network's coverage of the "controversial" arrest of two parents during a Loudoun County School Board meeting this past summer. Of course, parents opposed the imposition of the "preferred pronouns" policy.
Per Luke Rosiak's reporting for The Daily Wire:
On June 22, Scott Smith was arrested at a Loudoun County, Virginia school board meeting, a meeting that was ultimately deemed an “unlawful assembly” after many attendees vocally opposed a policy on transgender students.
What people did not know is that, weeks prior, on May 28, Smith says, a boy, allegedly wearing a skirt, entered a girls’ bathroom at nearby Stone Bridge High School, where he sexually assaulted Smith’s ninth-grade daughter.
Juvenile records are sealed, but Scott’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster told The Daily Wire that a boy was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio, related to an incident that day at that school.
As Smith told The Daily Wire, he went there to inform the school board that his daughter suffered a horrendous sexual assault- the direct result of the board's passage of a policy that allowed students to use the bathroom based on the gender that they identify with. Things heated up after Scott was barred from addressing the board. However, this is how anchors Carolina Sarassa and Borja Voces of Noticiero Univision: Edición Digital reported the news on the day after the meeting and Smith’s subsequent arrest:
CAROLINA SARASSA: And we move on to the controversies in schools and you have to see this footage of how two parents end up arrested in the middle of a school board meeting. Listen:
FATHER TO BOARD: ...this gender... I am disgusted by your bigotry and your depravity.
BOARD MEMBER: ...Joan Mobley to be followed by Donna Russell...
COMMOTION
SARASSA: The topic to be discussed was the rights of transgender students in Virginia schools wherein it was proposed to parents to have the school address the minors by their preferred pronouns; that is, he, she or (they/them), when a student does not want to be defined by gender.
BORJA VOCES: That school board in Loudoun County has been appealing a judge's recent decision to reinstate a teacher who spoke out against this proposal citing his religious beliefs. Without a doubt it is an issue that has caused a lot of confusion and a lot of controversy
For Univision, the story had no greater purpose at the time than to help set up a GLAAD representative who was given more than three minutes to talk about the invented binary pronoun "elle." Nothing else was said about the case until The Daily Wire's report. National Latino media have not covered the story in its entirety. Univision's local Washington D.C affiliate covered it but as a local crime story — while leaving out the underlying details of the controversy in June. They also omitted that the young man was charged with other sexual crimes in October, at the school to which he was transferred after the initial incident.
In fact, The Daily Wire also reports that as a result of these incidents, the State of Virginia has just launched an investigation into the Loudoun County School Board.
The bias by omission could not be more evident. Depriving audiences of critical information that not only interferes with the educational material to which children are exposed in schools, but also affects their physical and mental safety, does a disservice to the community that Univision claims to defend. At MRC we will be looking out to see how the issue progresses.
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