CT Blue

I’m a big fan of Talking Points Memo, so I was quite surprised to read about this in an email thread.

You may have heard that the Connecticut Democrats have gone after Linda McMahon, who constantly refers to her Wrestling company as a promoter of PG entertainment. And it is PG, if you consider necrophilia to be a family friendly subject.

Well, TPM covered the story, and the fact that the WWF immediately removed those particular videos from youtube, but the article ends with this non sequitur:

Also, a source points out that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), who McMahon hopes to defeat in 2010, has taken more than $922,000 from the TV and movie industry, according to OpenSecrets. The source wonders if Dodd condones violence and sex depicted on film.

I can understand that protecting sources has a place in journalism. But it hardly seems that it’s appropriate for a journalist to grant anonymity so a source can “wonder” if someone condones violence and sex in film. I always thought that a source was a person who provides factual material to a reporter, not opinion. What possible reason could there be to allow this “source” to go unnamed? It leaves me wondering whether this source is someone with a vested interest in getting McMahon elected, or at the very least in seeing Chris Dodd defeated.

This is the sort of thing we have come to expect from the Washington Post and the New York Times. I thought Josh Marshall (he didn’t write it, but it’s his site) aspired to higher standards.

UPDATE: From a press release from the Connecticut Democrats:

Hartford, CT – When asked why the WWE requested that YouTube remove three videos which had become a political issue for Linda McMahon today, company Vice President Robert Zimmerman said, “This is a continuing process that goes on. It is not related to the campaign. We constantly track illegal usage of our intellectual property. That is something that try to continuously go after.”

However, a quick search of “WWE” on YouTube’s site shows that there are more than 516,000 videos still active on the site.

“There are more than a half a million WWE videos on YouTube. WWE today asked that only three — the three that had become a political issue for Linda McMahon — be removed,” said Connecticut Democratic Party Communications Director Colleen Flanagan. “Clearly WWE, a publicly traded corporation, is acting as an agent of the McMahon campaign, presumably at the direction of Mr. or Mrs. McMahon. And that’s a violation of federal law.”

It’s good to see the Connecticut Democrats pushing on these stories.