Fox News Host Is Scrutinized for Her Ties to Candidate

Greta Van Susteren, the Fox News host, faced questions about whether she should have disclosed the friendship between her husband, a noted Washington lawyer, and Herman Cain, whose wife, Gloria, granted Ms. Van Susteren an exclusive interview.

The appearance was a huge coup for Fox News, coming shortly after Mr. Cain was accused of sexually harassing several women. The friendship between Mr. Cain and Ms. Van Susteren’s husband, John Coale, came to light after NY1 reported that Mr. Coale had called Cindy Adams, The New York Post gossip columnist, to cancel a dinner with Mr. Cain and media luminaries like Barbara Walters and Matt Lauer. Ms. Van Susteren would not comment on the record on Wednesday about whether she had ever disclosed to Fox executives her husband’s friendship with Mr. Cain. And she did not answer another question, posed to her in an e-mail from The New York Times, about whether anyone at Fox News had pressed her to mention the friendship on her 10 p.m. Fox News Channel program. Some journalists in the news division of Fox, which has long felt that its reporting is unfairly associated with Fox’s right-leaning hosts like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Ms. Van Susteren, were said to have voiced their concerns about yet another example of coziness between Republicans and the network.