Is Sarah Palin running for president? Who knows.

What we do know is that she recently hired a chief of staff. She stars in a new bio-pic that will premiere next month in the early primary state of Iowa. She told Fox News that she has the “fire in the belly.” And now she has announced that she is embarking on a nationwide bus tour to “educate and energize Americans.”

Earlier this year Fox News suspended Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum pending their decisions on whether they were running for president. There was far less activity on their part indicating a candidacy, yet they were suspended and given a deadline for making their intentions known. When the deadline expired their contracts were terminated even though they still had not declared a candidacy.

Why isn’t Palin being held to the same standard? There is more than enough evidence that she is contemplating being a candidate seriously enough to warrant her suspension from Fox News. She can be reinstated later if she decides not to run.

How can Fox cover the campaign with her on their payroll? Her commentary with regard to the other candidates is tainted by the fact that she may be competing against them soon. One has to wonder if Fox already knows her decision and is keeping it under wraps to permit her, and Fox, to earn more money and promote her campaign.

Will Fox cover the premiere of her movie? Will they cover her bus tour? If she then announces that she’s running, didn’t she then get suspect contributions to her campaign from Fox? More broadly, no one in the press should cover her movie or her bus tour. She refuses to engage the press or the people in any open forum. Her only methods of communication are through Fox News, Facebook, and Twitter. Last week Palin told Sean Hannity that

“Candidates need to get their message out through the new social media. Don’t even participate in that goofy game that’s been played for too many years with the leftist lame-stream media.”

Fine. Let her have it her way. Until Palin is willing to stand before the people, or the people’s representatives in the press, she should be ignored. The press has no obligation to participate in the marketing of her brand.

Fox entered this year with five potential GOP presidential candidates in their employ. They still have two remaining. It is time for Fox to insist that Palin either declare for office or step aside. If she doesn’t, Fox should pull her off the air immediately. That’s what a responsible media enterprise would do. Which is why Fox will probably not do it.

[UPDATE] Fox News has lived down to expectations:

“”We are not changing Sarah Palin’s status,” Bill Shine, Fox News executive vice president of programming, told The Cutline.”

If anything, I think this indicates that Palin is NOT running. It seems unlikely that Fox would go to the trouble of affirming her status if they thought they would have to reverse themselves in a few weeks. I think they already know she isn’t running and are keeping it secret because once she is out of the contest her relevance (and value) crumbles. It’s a shame because I was hoping she would run. I even made a campaign bumper sticker for her and a possible Tea Party running mate that would save a lot of money and recycle some old campaign materials that were never used: