Who’s responsible for the Associated Press’s ongoing Tim Eyman worship?

A few moments ago, NPI’s news crawler alert­ed me that the Asso­ci­at­ed Press has just dumped anoth­er half-baked — no, make that quar­ter-baked — “sto­ry” out on the wire, glo­ri­fy­ing an announce­ment Tim Eyman sup­pos­ed­ly made about attempt­ing to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive for the bal­lot this year.

I say sup­pos­ed­ly because I haven’t seen any oth­er news out­let report­ing that Tim is launch­ing a new ini­tia­tive cam­paign, and Tim has not (yet?) sent out an email to his sup­port­ers or post­ed any­thing at unSoundPolitics.

But it would­n’t sur­prise me if he told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press they could have an exclu­sive, know­ing that they would oblig­ing­ly write up a few one-sided para­graphs for him with­out both­er­ing to com­plete an actu­al story .

Here is what they published:

SEATTLE – Ini­tia­tive guru Tim Eyman says he’s push­ing a statewide cam­paign this year to make sure that the Leg­is­la­ture — and not the gov­er­nor’s Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion — is respon­si­ble for set­ting high­way tolls.

Last year, Eyman’s I‑1053 passed, requir­ing that any new or increased fees require major­i­ty leg­isla­tive approval. He says law­mak­ers vio­lat­ed that in the pend­ing trans­porta­tion bud­get by say­ing they would adopt what­ev­er toll rates the com­mis­sion deemed appropriate.

His new ini­tia­tive — I‑1125 — would require law­mak­ers to set tolls. It would reit­er­ate that gas tax and toll rev­enue must be used on trans­porta­tion spend­ing, and it would bar tolls from one project from being used to pay for anoth­er. For exam­ple, if the state decides to put tolls on Inter­state 90, that mon­ey could­n’t be used to pay for the new High­way 520 bridge over Lake Washington.

That’s all there is. This same blurb, which can’t be legit­i­mate­ly called a sto­ry, has already been pub­lished online by The Seat­tle Times, The Olympian, and a few tele­vi­sion sta­tions. It is essen­tial­ly noth­ing more than a puff pro­mo­tion­al piece for Eyman, except it’s devoid of Tim’s col­or­ful language.

(At least in terms of enter­tain­ment val­ue, Tim is a bet­ter writer than any­body the Asso­ci­at­ed Press employs).

The author of the blurb is pre­dictably not iden­ti­fied. The byline sim­ply says Seat­tle, which makes me think the three para­graphs the blurb con­tains were pro­duced by some­body work­ing out of the Seat­tle bureau a block south of the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer Build­ing on Elliott Avenue.

What we’re won­der­ing is whether the per­son wrote the above also hap­pens to be respon­si­ble for this, or whether the Eyman wor­ship is a team effort.

I wish that the equa­tion, Asso­ci­at­ed Press = Tim Eyman’s P.R. agency were unfair. After all, a wire ser­vice that’s more than cen­tu­ry old and adver­tis­es itself as “the essen­tial glob­al news net­work” should be able to pro­duce jour­nal­ism. If the A.P. is going to bite at Tim Eyman’s fish­ing line, they should do more than just para­phrase what­ev­er email he sent them. Because that’s not jour­nal­ism. That’s recycling.

Is it unrea­son­able to expect that a news orga­ni­za­tion which claims to be objec­tive should strive for objec­tiv­i­ty? I don’t think it is.

We don’t oper­ate under the pre­tense that we’re objec­tive because we like to be open and upfront with our read­ers. Our view­point and our pol­i­cy direc­tions are based on the val­ues and prin­ci­ples we believe in. Those val­ues are not a secret.

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, on the oth­er hand, adver­tis­es itself as a not-for-prof­it news coop­er­a­tive, “deliv­er­ing fast, unbi­ased news from every cor­ner of the world to all media plat­forms and for­mats”. That’s a direct quote from their website.

There’s no way the blurb above could be con­sid­ered unbi­ased;. Eyman’s per­spec­tive is the only view­point in it. There is no oth­er view­point of any kind rep­re­sent­ed in those para­graphs, let alone a dis­sent­ing view­point. That blurb might be appro­pri­ate for P.R. Newswire, but cer­tain­ly not the A.P. Newswire.

As for Eyman’s ini­tia­tive, I‑1125, it’s dead on arrival unless Eyman has found a wealthy bene­fac­tor to fund it. Maybe his bud­dy Kem­per Free­man, Jr. agreed to give him half a mil­lion bucks. Or maybe Michael Dun­mire has agreed to resume fill­ing Eyman’s cof­fers with cash. We’ll know soon enough.

There are only around two months to go until this year’s dead­line for sub­mit­ting bal­lot mea­sure peti­tions arrives (it’s always in ear­ly July).

If Eyman is intend­ing to qual­i­fy I‑1125 to the bal­lot, he’s going to need to get hired mer­ce­nar­ies out on the street imme­di­ate­ly. Two months isn’t a lot of time to col­lect three hun­dred thou­sand signatures.

UPDATE: So, evi­dent­ly, while I was writ­ing this post, this blurb was in the process of being turned into more of an actu­al sto­ry by the Seat­tle bureau’s Gene John­son. John­son is who the Albany Times-Union (of Albany, New York) cred­its as the author of the longer piece that begins with the blurb.

Sen­a­tor Mary Mar­garet Hau­gen is con­sult­ed for the dis­sent­ing viewpoint.

The intro­duc­to­ry para­graph has also been changed to read “fre­quent ini­tia­tive spon­sor” instead of the more one-sided “guru”.

The changes are wel­come, but the exis­tence of this longer piece does­n’t jus­ti­fy the A.P.‘s pub­li­ca­tion of a half-baked, unfin­ished ver­sion. Most of the news out­lets that have picked this up still do not have the full version.