Donald Trump Boycotts Fox News for 'Unfair' Treatment
Republican presidential hopeful and real estate tycoon Donald Trump revived his contempt over Fox News and decided enough is enough after saying on Wednesday that he was treated 'very unfairly' by the news organization.
In a tweet, Trump expressed his dismay over Fox News' bias reportage and said that he therefore decided that he "won't be doing anymore Fox shows in the foreseeable future."
A statement issued by Fox News as reported by NBC News says that Trump was provoked to boycott the cable news channel after they decided to cancel his appearance on The O'Reilly Factor scheduled Thursday.
"At 11:45am today, we canceled Donald Trump's scheduled appearance on The O'Reilly Factor on Thursday, which resulted in Mr. Trump's subsequent tweet about his 'boycott' of FOX News. The press predictably jumped to cover his tweet, creating yet another distraction from any real issues that Mr. Trump might be questioned about," a spokesperson from Fox News said in an e-mail, NBC News reports.
In the same report by NBC News, the spokesperson said that whenever a report does go the way Trump wanted, "he engages in personal attacks on [their] anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome" and that "he doesn't seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country."
Fox News, however, kept mum on specifying the reason why they had to cancel Trump's scheduled appearance, CNN says.
According to The Guardian, Trump started waging war against Bill O'Reilly on Monday even before his schedule was canceled after the host had featured some guests that the presidential bet found to be too tough on him.
In a tweet, Trump asked O'Reilly why he would not just invite "some knowledgeable talking heads" in his show just for a change rather than "the same old Trump haters". He then ended his tweet by saying "Boring!"
The Guardian also reports that Trump was also affected when O'Reilly's failed to cite a poll that showed how far along Trump has been doing. "@oreillyfactor was very negative to me in refusing to post the great polls that came out today including NBC. @FoxNews not good for me!," Trump said in a tweet on Monday.
This was not the first time Trump had bad blood over Fox News. NBC News reports that Trump had been in a word brawl against Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly after he accused the anchor of asking incongruous questions during a debate aired August 6. In the end, the presidential bet and network declared deuces with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes saying that the "air has been cleared."