Photo was given to the AP by the "owner".
Kittens are born with their eyes closed, and when their eyes do open, they are always blue.
Even if this kitty was mutant enough to have been born with an open eye, the owner says it is a Ragdoll kitten. ALL Ragdolls have blue eyes, so this kitten would not have the genetic ability to have a brown eye.
It does not have a cat pupil.
If it were born deformed, what are the odds that it would have a perfectly centered open round eye?
My last point is that the AP prints what anyone tells them, without verification.
My personal opinion is that it is photoshopped.
Apart from that I don't think this rises to the level of news. Deformed animals in domestic stock are not unusual. They are highly inbred usually.
The photo is real. That kitten was born with a defect that is an element in the Holoprosencephaly Spectrum. HPE occurs when the corpus callosum of the forebrain fails to develop. There is a wide range of defects within the HPE Spectrum. Some defects are barely noticeable. The above defect is a very severe one. If you do a little research on the internet, you'll find some photos of human babies born with an identical defect. I'm not going to link any here because I don't want anyone to yell at me for posting links to photos that are likely to be very disturbing to some.