The Yes on 920 Campaign: Keeping Washington Business Alive reported today that the Wenatchee World donated $25,000 to the effort to repeal the state estate tax. Reports filed with the Public Disclosure Commission show it came on Oct. 2.

That news, as well as an in-kind donation to the campaign from The Seattle Times I wrote about last night, prompted a call from Sandeep Kaushik, communications director for the No on I-920 campaign. He says newspapers, including the one I work for, are breaching their trust with readers.

"The publishers of these newspapers contributing are showing a cavalier willingness to sacrifice their own papers' journalistic credibility so they can attain a self-serving political agenda."

The Columbian in Vancouver and a chain of small papers, Pioneer Newspapers, earlier donated money to the campaign.

Kaushik is a former reporter for The Stranger and currently on leave from his job as an aide to King County Executive Ron Sims. He said he was working today on plans for a previously scheduled meeting Friday with the editorial board of the Wenatchee World.

"Now I've got to figure out, do we still do it? It's getting a little absurd. It's getting to be a pretty long list of newspapers that have direct involvement."

The Seattle Times Company owns the Yakima Herald and the Walla Walla Union Bulletin, and the papers in the Pioneer chain include the Ellensburg Record and the Skagit Valley Herald.

Kaushik is not the only one concerned about the newspapers' roles. And for the record, he and other critics are most concerned about The Seattle Times because publisher Frank Blethen has made repeal of the estate tax a priority for him, the paper and the company.

In their 2003 book, "Wealth and Our Commonwealth," Bill Gates, Sr., and Chuck Collins, supporters of the estate tax, wrote about Blethen's "passionate and committed," though they say misleading, campaign for repeal.

"He has marshaled his considerable energy and resources to the cause. The fact that repeal efforts have advanced as far as they have is a credit to his talents and tenacity," the authors note ruefully.

Times lobbyist Jill Mackie told me that she has helped the campaign on shaping its messages and offered information on the effect of the estate tax on family-owned businesses. She also has helped find business support for the repeal:

"We have also helped connect family businesses who oppose this tax with the campaign."

Kaushik says newspapers should never give political donations.

"Newspapers can't trade on this objectivity and evenhandedness, this aura of dispassionate and reasonable analysis and .. these Solomonic judgments and then be direct players in campaigns."

He says that's especially true when "they've been spotty about revealing their involvement to their readers." He says a newspaper's political activity should be noted any time the paper writes about the issue.

"The Seattle Times and these other papers have put themselves in an ethical hall of mirrors."

Kelly McBride, a former reporter for The Spokesman-Review, is the ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a Florida journalism think tank. We talked about the Times' donation and the reaction from Kaushik and others.

"I think that discomfort is there for a good reason. But that doesn't mean this doesn't happen. Publishers and newspaper owners ... all over the country get heavily involved in political issues.

...

"I don't know that you can make the argument necessarily that owners and publishers should not be involved in making political donations. It would be nice but I don't think it's practical to suggest that powerful, influential people are not going to try to use their influence on a political process. It's almost undemocratic to suggest that.

"But a good newsroom will create a system to insulate the journalist from those attempts to wield power and influence, and then explain what that system is to the readers."

And that's where McBride said newspapers fall short, causing readers to be suspicious of their movtives.

"We haven't made a habit of explaining ourselves very well, so of course they're cynical. They have no idea how we do our job and in the absence of any explanation, they assume the worst, which is human nature. That's why we have to take responsibility for our own reputation."

In Vancouver, Columbian Editor Lou Brancaccio wrote a column Saturday trying to reassure readers that the political donation would not effect news coverage of the estate tax.

If you think it through, newspapers have always taken editorial stances on their Opinion pages on issues.

That kind of thing is simply standard operating procedure. And reporters have always been able to do their jobs covering a topic. An editorial stance, a donation or being part of a group doesn't change a reporter's need to be objective.

UPDATE: To respond to much of what has been said about this subject, let me repeat what I said in the comment thread yesterday. In my 10 years at The Times not once has anyone even hinted at trying to influence coverage of this issue or any other becuase of the position of Frank Blethen or the Seattle Times Company. Blethen plays no role in the newsroom, either officially or unofficially and no one does his bidding there, either.