WWE Stands Up to Critics

WWE is continuing to aggressively defend its brand from critics.

The Stamford-based wrestling and entertainment company is again striking back at Journal Inquirer Managing Editor Chris Powell.

“It is with great dismay that we find it necessary to once again point out that you have made false statements of fact…regarding the business of WWE,” states a May 24 letter from Brian Flinn, WWE’s senior vice president of marketing and communications. The letter was sent to Powell and copied to Connecticut political reporters covering Linda McMahon’s U.S. Senate campaign.

The company is taking a more aggressive approach to correcting what it says are inaccuracies and misstatements about its content than it did during the 2010 election cycle, when McMahon, the company’s former CEO, first ran for office.

“This time, WWE is taking a proactive and aggressive approach to ensure that accurate facts and statements are made about our company and brand,” Flinn said via email. “This has absolutely nothing to do with politics.”

“In the past,” Flinn continued, “WWE operated with an open door policy and the assumption that we would be treated fairly by the media. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, so this time we are taking an aggressive approach to ensure the media report the truth about our company and brand.”

On Thursday, the company responded to a column by Powell published in Monday’s edition of the Journal Inquirer. The column is critical of McMahon, a Republican seeking the seat held by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, but it never mentions WWE.

The column says McMahon’s “practical qualifications for office did not extend beyond her fantastic wealth, and that wealth derived from the business of violence, pornography, and general raunch.”

WWE took particular umbrage to the implication that it was in the business of peddling pornography, calling it “categorically false and especially malicious.”

“Simply put, WWE has never been in the pornography business,” Flinn writes. “As we previously advised you on February 2, 2012 when you first libeled WWE by such statements, our broadcast programming is TV-PG and has always appeared on basic cable or broadcast television…WWE is family entertainment.”

This isn’t the first time during the 2012 campaign cycle that WWE has fought back against those that have criticized the brand. In February, the company wrote to both Powell and Republican Christopher Shays after they each likened WWE’s programming to pornography. Shays is running against McMahon.

The company demands that Powell issue a retraction “by June 4, 2012 in as public a manner as that in which you made these false statements.” If the newspaper fails to comply, “we will seek legal and all available remedies,” the letter concludes.

Reached earlier today, Powell said he responded to Flinn and asked if he wanted his letter published.

“We’re not planning any retraction,” Powell said, adding that the column never mentioned WWE.

But, he added, he asked Flinn “if we could hold the deposition before the primary because I wanted to meet Trish .”

Flinn said this afternoon he had yet to receive Powell’s letter. “All I can say is we’re going to wait and see what the response is. Then we’ll make a decision.”

Meanwhile the company is continuing “Stand Up for WWE,” an effort launched in 2010 “to provide fans the opportunity to voice their support for WWE when the company comes under inaccurate and biased attacks,” Flinn said.