There's a little uncompleted work between good newsblogs.
On October 25, the NY Times blogger Jim Rutenberg reported that Fox News had sent a cease and desist letter to the McCain campaign, telling them not to use Fox News footage on the McCain campaign web site or advertisements. A day later, TPM's Greg Sargent followed up
with the story that the Fox News letter was sent only to the McCain campaign, despite Fox News footage plastered on the Romney and Guiliani web campaign sites. Just another day in the Rudy-Rupert lovefest.
But is this all just cover for Rudy? Did Fox even send a letter, or did they send it with a wink and a kiss?
Happily, the story was news with the from the NY Times blog that Fox News was shamed into sending cease and desist letters to all the campaign web sites. This appeared to be confirmed by a letter to Romney, and Romney's response to Fox.
In the time since October 25, Bernie Kerik has been indicted, Judith Regan has filed a lawsuit against News Corp alleging she was pressured to lie to investigators in order to protect Guiliani, and we've come to accept that Fox News has ordered all campaigns to stop using their footage because The New York Times blog reported that Fox promised they would.
But did it happen? Guiliani's web site is lousy (in both senses) with Fox News footage, and there haven't been any reports of his campaign's response to any cease and desist letter. Would somebody mind asking Fox, or Rudy, for that matter, if Fox is still favoring Rudy like we've always known?
BTW, I sent a note to Greg Sargent on this, and he kindly responded that it was worth following up. But he's following a lot of stories, and I don't necessarily expect him to follow this just because he broke it.