It's common for TV news desks to scoop up a story developed by bloggers and claim that they're the first on it - heck, they do it to newspapers all the time. (They also like to reference background sources as "Internet blogs" rather than naming any.) But NBC's L.A. affiliate has been going above and beyond with the Carter's tagless story. From a report today on KNBC's website:

The Kunze family says their daughter's rash first appeared when their daughter Ava was just six weeks old. It lasted for five months. They say, "We saw the first NBC investigative piece and that's when we had the 'ah-ha' moment correlating this injury to Carter's tag-less."

The pitcher version of this story will air tomorrow (Thursday) night, and we'll be pretty interested to see what plaudits KNBC's Investigative Team actually has on tape from Janet Kunze and her husband John. (How do multiple people provide a quote? Speaking in unison?) Janet Kunze's own blog, which she launched in October to help raise awareness about the issue, tells her own story at the foot of every page. It reads, in part:

Last month (September 2008), I was perusing through the Internet and discovered several blogs on babies being affected by Carters tagless clothing. This ah-ha! moment brought to light the months of unanswered questions to my daughter's wound -- it was the Carters tagless clothes she wore that caused it.

We first reported on the Carter's issue on Z Recommends on Sept. 3. Kunze was kind enough to credit a couple of blogs, including ours, for helping her first identify the source of her daughter Ava's rash, which led to a staph infection and hospitalization.

The consciousness-raising of Lindsey Webb, who has joined a class-action lawsuit against Carter's, was also attributed by KNBC's Ana Garcia to... KNBC's Ana Garcia. I think Ana Garcia is angling for a raise.

The only info we're aware of that KNBC has aired from Carter's to date is the pre-advisory statement the company drafted at our request, and which we published on Sept. 12.

We're currently saving the results of an FOIA request to the CPSC for a rainy day, and we have a phone interview scheduled with Carter's CEO Michael Casey tomorrow, which we'll write up for Friday publication.

Hey, we aren't bitter. We'll keep belting them out, and they can keep running the bases.