LA Times: Andrew Malcolm shouldn't have directed readers to Palin donation page

On Friday, Media Matters noted that in a post defending Sarah Palin, Los Angeles Times blogger Andrew Malcolm directed readers to a credit card donation page for Palin's political action committee. There was no reason for Malcolm's link other than to send readers directly to Palin's donation page; Malcolm's link didn't contain the text of the Palin email he was discussing or anything other than fields for entering donation amounts and credit card information.

In response, a Los Angeles Times spokesperson told Media Matters that Malcolm shouldn't have linked to the donation page. The LA Times emailed: “Top of the Ticket has been updated. We link out to all kinds of political sites, but this should've linked to the PAC homepage instead of the donor card. As it does now.”

Malcolm's July 8 blog post no longer links to a donation page, but instead links to the homepage for SarahPAC. In a separate blog post yesterday touting the prospects of a Palin presidential run, Malcolm wrote:

Apparently some folks who don't like Sarah Palin but spend an awful lot of time tracking her online anyway read our recent item about how extraordinarily rich Sarah Palin isn't and objected to her e-mailed fund-raising link being in there. More properly that link should go to the SarahPAC site itself. So here is that link.

Previously:

Andrew Malcolm fundraises for Palin on LA Times blog -- does the Times care?

Media Matters: Andrew Malcolm