Nearly as telling as what newsrooms report is what they don’t report.
A Loudoun, Virginia, man was violently arrested at a school board hearing on June 22 as school officials debated a proposed policy expanding special protections to transgender students. The man, Scott Smith, was bloodied and hauled away in handcuffs.
Legacy media couldn’t get enough of the story. It was proof that parents whose minds have been poisoned by right-wing disinformation have gotten out of control. Smith is a menace, legacy media suggested, citing video of his arrest as evidence of his lunacy, a genuine danger to the selfless school board officials he intended to confront.
Now, however, we learn the small-business owner attended the June 22 hearing to confront Loudoun County officials about his daughter, who was allegedly raped and beaten in a school bathroom on May 28 by a “gender-fluid” boy. County school board officials, who asserted at the June 22 hearing there have been zero sexual assaults in the district, confirmed this week Smith’s daughter was, in fact, sexually abused on school property. School officials also concede they have a history of mishandling sexual abuse cases.
Weirdly enough, the same press that breathlessly report on incidents such as Scott’s arrest, arguing anti-mask and anti-critical race theory parents have grown frighteningly unruly, have gone silent.
The New York Times, for example, hasn’t made a single mention of the rape. It did, however, obliquely refer to the Virginia man’s arrest in a longer article this week about the state’s gubernatorial race.
The Associated Press, which covered Smith’s arrest, has also reported nothing about Loudoun County’s admitted mismanagement of school sexual assault.
NBC, ABC, and CBS News, which likewise covered Smith’s arrest, have reported nothing on the school district’s reported malfeasance, according to the Media Research Center’s Nicholas Fondacaro. Neither has CNN or MSNBC.
The same journalists who use people such as Smith as avatars for the dangerous, ignorant, right-wing parent apparently have zero interest in covering his story. They have apparently zero interest in reporting his daughter’s abuse, the fact that Loudoun administrators have a reported history of mismanaging sexual abuse cases, the fact that school administrators have lied about the number of sexual assaults in their district, or even the fact that Smith’s accused assailant allegedly sexually assaulted a second girl in October.
It’s obscene not only because Scott’s story has all the elements of a genuine bombshell report — everything from government malfeasance to chronic sexual abuse in school to misbehavior by law enforcement officials — but because the same newsrooms ignoring Smith’s story are the ones that use incidents such as his June 22 arrest to vilify parents casually.
You’d think there would be at least some mild effort to follow up on Smith’s verified story, considering all the effort our media have put into covering unruly school board meetings. But you’d be wrong.
If it’s any consolation or silver lining for the broader, non-right-of-center journalism community, the Washington Post can at least say it has reported on the rape.
However, a single example from a list of nearly a dozen news organizations that have suddenly gone silent on an issue they covered previously is hardly something worth bragging about.
