In politics, silence can be louder than words.
For five full days, the major networks — ABC, CBS, PBS — said nothing. Not a word about Virginia Democrat Jay Jones, the attorney general candidate caught sending text messages so violent they sounded like something from a crime thriller.
Only NBC bothered to mention it. Sixty-three seconds. That’s all.
The Media Research Center combed through every major broadcast — World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, NewsHour — from the Friday the story broke through Tuesday morning.
The silence was deafening.
It began when National Review revealed Jones’ 2022 texts to a former colleague.
“Put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time,” he wrote.
He compared his Republican opponent, John Gilbert, to Hitler and Pol Pot — and according to one source, went further still, wishing that Gilbert’s wife would “watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views.”
Even Morning Joe — that bastion of Beltway sympathy — admitted the obvious. “This guy should do everyone a favor and step out of the race.”
And yet, the establishment press looked away.
The Associated Press fixated on GOP reaction. The Washington Post and Politico labeled it mere “Virginia election upheaval.”
Republicans from Richmond to Washington called for Jones to step down. A few Democrats winced. None withdrew their support. Not a single U.S. Senate Democrat has said the words “he should go.”
So the story fades, the cameras blink, and the candidate remains — proof that for some, moral outrage is a partisan privilege.
Read the full study here: https://t.co/XHmeiJdPDh
— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) October 8, 2025
