New York (CNN Business) The top editor at the Washington Examiner, a leading conservative news organization, instructed staff in recent months to refrain from writing negative stories about Fox News, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The people who spoke to CNN Business said that they believed the Examiner's editor in chief, Hugo Gurdon, handed down the order because he was afraid such stories would lead to the network blacklisting Examiner staffers. Prior to January 1, the Examiner had published some stories critical of Fox News. But since then, the stories have been almost uniformly positive for the network, including several articles touting Fox News' ratings success. A rare exception was a recent story which quoted Trump criticizing the network.

The directive from Gurdon illustrates the influence Fox News wields over conservative media organizations. Such organizations know that if they antagonize Fox News their reporters and editors might no longer be invited on the network, and they'd lose a valuable opportunity to promote their work and drive traffic to their websites.

Neither Gurdon nor a spokesperson for the Examiner responded to multiple requests for comment.

It's not unprecedented for a conservative media organization to direct staff to avoid criticizing Fox News. In 2015, when Tucker Carlson worked as a contributor for the network while simultaneously serving as The Daily Caller's editor in chief, Carlson made such a policy clear to his staffers . Carlson said in an interview with Real Clear Politics that reporters couldn't "go after Fox" because he worked at the network and it presented a "conflicted situation."

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