Dear Bill,
I happen to be a fan of yours. I watch your show often, find you engaging, informative and have a great admiration for your intelligence. Normally I find you to be true to your word about being fair and balanced. However in a recent discussion on your show in which you discussed the impact the media has had on the rise of Donald Trump I felt you did the one thing you normally do not do, you spun the story to benefit your position. Normally the manner in which you stay clear of that trap distinguishes you significantly from anyone else that comes close to your level of success. In this matter however I fee that you failed tremendously, and here is why.
I find it unlikely you will read this, even less likely you will respond and next to impossible that my concerns will reach anyone beyond your organization or your show for that matter, but seeing as this is indeed a story I agree to be as significant as you maintain it to be, I felt it important to reach out to you. You may indeed be entirely correct regarding some of your assertions of your lack of involvement in the promotion of Donald Trump. I believe you when you say you have made unsuccessful attempts at getting other candidates on your show and I accept your argument that your job is to report the news and that Donald Trump makes news. But what about the rest of the media, be it FOX ,CNN or others? After last week’s primaries in Pennsylvania, my brother Marcel Groen, State Party Chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party was scheduled to appear on FOX Business with Neil Cavuto. He waited for about an hour before he had to go back to attend to his responsibilities and commitments. Why? Because almost every single guest that came on, some that appeared to not be originally scheduled, came on to speak about Donald Trump, pushing Neil Cavuto way over his schedule. I understand that FOX is a network far more in sync with the Republican Party, but there was more news that night than Donald Trump. I realize in fairness that what happened the day of the Pennsylvania primaries can not be directly seen as helping the rise of Donald Trump to that point, but it certainly did represent what has been going on for quite some time. Also let me make something clear. This is not about me being disappointed that my brother did not appear on air that night. I am quite certain he got over it immediately as did I and anyone else who wanted to see him. However, it does clearly show how the coverage is driven by the Trump phenomena over everything else.
And it is hardly just FOX who is to blame. CNN has their very own Trump surrogate, Kayleigh Mcenany at almost every political discussion. What other candidate can we say that about? It often seemed that when there were Trump surrogates at most of these discussions, they were countered more with anti-Trump voices than with surrogates for Cruz or Kasich.
The media may not want to accept responsibility, but it has a responsibility nonetheless. For months all we heard about John Kasich was how he was the most qualified of any candidate. Yet since he was not exciting enough, and therefore might not have generated the same ratings, the percentage of time he was covered compared to Donald Trump and even Ted Cruz was catastrophic to his candidacy. And Bill, regardless of whether or not the other candidates accept your invitation to be on your show, did you not have some responsibility to cover their activities in a more proportionate manner? Your answer may very well be that you did not have that responsibility and that would certainly be within your rights. After all, as you often say, it is your show, you have been number 1 for a long time and you know what you are doing. I just think it would be have been more fair and balanced to an audience possibly making the most important choice of its lifetime if you had accepted that responsibility. Most of all it would have been far more honest if you would have come clean and admit it’s all about ratings rather than say the media did not play a significant role.
I have heard the argument that has been made about how so much of the negative press about Donald Trump also comes from the media. That immediately made me remember one of my best friends from my High School days in London who once told me, “I don’t really care if people love me or hate me, as long as they talk about me”. Donald Trump has benefited from this excessive coverage from the start, be it good or bad. But Bill, I ask you to consider the following analogy. When a fan rushes on to a baseball field, television no longer shows the fan in realization that in doing so the allure of rushing the field has been significantly diminished. Who knows what might have happened for example if the media had reacted comparably to Donald Trump saying that John McCain was not a war hero because he got caught. The Trump campaign may never have gotten to where it is today.
All this being said I will continue to watch because I do respect you and enjoy your show, even if I do feel that regarding this topic you have been much less truthful than you normally are, not just to your audience but possibly to yourself as well.
Sincerely,
David Groen
LIKE THIS POST? SHARE IT ON FACEBOOK OR TWITTER
READ MORE OF WHAT I HAVE TO SAY IN THE DAILY COLUMN
JOIN “THE GLOBAL COALITION FOR ISRAEL” ON FACEBOOK
GLOBAL COALITION FOR ISRAEL IS NOW ON TWITTER @gcimovement
IN CONJUNCTION WITH GLOBAL COALITION FOR ISRAEL
Holland's Heroes 
Leave a Reply