It is common knowledge that Fox News is practically the in house PR office for the Repubican Party. It seems they might like some Republicans more than others. The New York Times reports on the relationship between Roger Ailes and Rudy Giuliani:
Mr. Ailes was the media consultant to Mr. Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989. Mr. Giuliani, as mayor, officiated at Mr. Ailes’s wedding and intervened on his behalf when Mr. Ailes’s company, Fox News Channel, was blocked from securing a cable station in the city…
Whether their friendship would ever affect coverage — Fox insists that it has not and will not — it is nonetheless the sort of relationship that other campaigns are watching, though none wanted to speak publicly for fear of offending the station.
So far this year, one political journal found, Mr. Giuliani has logged more time on Fox interview programs than any other candidate. Most of the time has been spent with Sean Hannity, an acknowledged admirer of the former mayor, according to the data compiled by the journal, known as The Hotline.
Fox executives say Mr. Giuliani’s appearances have been driven by his news value and by his status as a front-runner, not by his relationship with Mr. Ailes.
“I can’t remember his ever saying anything, one way or the other, about our coverage of the Giuliani campaign,” Brit Hume, the anchor who coordinates much of Fox’s political coverage, said of Mr. Ailes. “And I am under no injunctions, restrictions, encouragements or directions of any kind as to how that campaign should be covered.”
Yet the relationship between Mr. Ailes and Mr. Giuliani is of the sort that led Mr. Ailes to grouse about CNN during the Clinton administration. Rick Kaplan, the president of CNN at the time, and President Clinton were established friends. Mr. Ailes, asserting the cable channel’s coverage of the president was altogether too warm, called it the “Clinton News Network.”
