The small-town Kansas newspaper raided by police officers had been looking into allegations of misconduct against the local chief just months ago, according to the paper’s publisher, raising further concerns about the law enforcement officers’ motives. The Marion, Kansas police department confiscated computers, cell phones and a range of other reporting materials from the office of the Marion County Record — the sole local paper in a small city of about 2,000 residents. Officers spent hours in the newsroom. It also seized material from one of its journalist’s homes. Eric Meyer, the publisher and co-owner of the newspaper, said his 98-year-old mother passed away the day after police raided her house, where Meyer was staying at the time. He said he believes the stress from the raid contributed to her death. The Associated Press has the story:
1st Amendment Right? Why Kan. police raided a newspaper?
Newslooks- MARION, Kan. (AP)
A small newspaper and a police department in Kansas are at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech as the newspaper struggled Monday to publish its next edition, days after police raided its office and the home of its owner and publisher.
Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones from the publisher and staff of the Marion County Record in Friday’s raid. On Monday, Kansas state authorities confirmed they are also involved in a criminal probe of the newspaper over allegations that it illegally obtained and used personal information about a local business owner.
Friday’s raids have been widely condemned by press freedom watchdogs as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly called the raids “concerning.” An attorney for the newspaper deemed the searches and seizures illegal and said the police department’s action “offends the constitutional protections the founding fathers gave the free press.” The Society of Professional Journalists pledged $20,000 toward the newspaper’s legal defense.
But some Marion residents hold a different view, accusing the newspaper of aggressive news coverage that has driven out businesses and painted a negative picture of the town of about 1,900 people.
Newspaper publisher and co-owner Eric Meyer said he believes the newspaper’s dogged coverage of local politics and Police Chief Gideon Cody’s record are the main reason for the raids. The Record was in the midst of digging into the newly hired chief’s past as a Kansas City, Missouri, police captain when the raids were carried out, Meyer said, although the newspaper hasn’t yet published a story.
The newspaper’s attorney, Bernie Rhodes of Kansas City, sent a letter to the Cody demanding that police not review any information on the computers or cellphones seized, saying they were taken illegally and contain identities of confidential sources. He also accuses Cody of misinterpreting laws on privacy and wrongly applying them to news reporters.
“I can assure you that the Record will take every step to obtain relief for the damages your heavy-handed actions have already caused my client,” Rhodes said.
The police searches appear to have been prompted by a complaint from a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, who accused the newspaper of invading her privacy after it obtained copies of her driving record, including a 2008 drunken driving conviction. Newell says the newspaper targeted her after she ordered Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant earlier this month during a political event.
Meyer says a source gave the newspaper the information unsolicited and that reporters verified it through public online records. The paper eventually decided not to run a story, but it did report on Newell’s complaints about the newspaper’s investigation at a city council meeting, where she publicly confirmed she’d had a DUI conviction and that she drove after her license was suspended.
The search warrant names Newell as a victim and lists the underlying reasons for the searches as suspicion of identity theft and “unlawful acts concerning computers.”
Both Meyer and Newell have said they have fielded messages — and some threats — from as far away as London in the aftermath of the raids. Meyer worked with his staff Monday to reconstruct stories, ads and other materials for its next edition Wednesday.
Cody defended the raid on the newsroom, saying it was conducted legally, while press freedom and civil rights organizations have said that police overstepped their authority.
Jared Smith, a lifelong Marion resident, said Monday that he supports the police raid. Smith accused the newspaper of ruining his wife’s day spa business opened only a year ago by digging into her past and discovering she had appeared nude in a magazine years before. That fact was repeated in the Record more than 20 times over a six-month period, Smith said.
“The newspaper is supposed to be something that, yes, reports the news. But it’s also a community newspaper,” he said. “It’s not, ‘How can I slam this community and drive people away?’ ”
Authorities appeared unprepared for the public backlash to the raids, as involved agencies either refused to comment Monday or took pains to acknowledge the constitutional right to a free press while defending the ability of police to investigate journalists.
Cody referred questions Monday to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, saying it was leading the investigation. The state agency, in turn, refused to say it had taken over the investigation, referring instead to a statement saying it had “joined” the investigation and seemed to try to distance itself from the raids.
The state police agency said it had assigned an agent to the case at the request of Cody on Aug. 8 — three days ahead of the raids — but did not apply for the search warrants and wasn’t there when they were executed. While the agency declared freedom of the press as “a vanguard of American democracy,” it also appeared to defend the actions of local police, saying: “No one is above the law, whether a public official or a representative of the media.”
Both Meyer and Newell are contemplating lawsuits — Newell against the newspaper and Meyer against the public officials who carried out the search.
Meyer also blames the raid at his home for stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her death on Saturday. Joan Meyer was the newspaper’s co-owner.
Why is a police raid on a newspaper in Kansas so unusual?
Tensions between public officials and the press are hardly unusual. To a large extent, it’s baked into their respective roles.
What’s rare in a democratic society is a police raid on a news organization’s office or the home of its owner. So when that happened late last week, it attracted the sort of national attention that the town of Marion, Kansas, is hardly used to.
The Marion Police Department took computers and cellphones from the office of the Marion County Record newspaper on Friday, and also entered the home of Eric Meyer, publisher and editor. The weekly newspaper serves a town of 1,900 people that is about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri.
Within two days, the raid drew the attention of some of the nation’s largest media organizations, including The Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, the New Yorker and the Gannett newspaper chain.
WHAT PROMPTED THIS ACTION?
Police said they had probable cause to believe there were violations of Kansas law, including one pertaining to identity theft, involving a woman named Kari Newell, according to a search warrant signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar.
Newell is a local restaurant owner — and no big fan of the newspaper — who had Meyer and one of his reporters thrown out of an event being held there for a local congressman.
Newell said she believed the newspaper, acting on a tip, violated the law to get her personal information to check the status of her driver’s license following a 2008 conviction for drunk driving. Meyer said the Record decided not to write about it, but when Newell revealed at a subsequent city council meeting that she had driven while her license was suspended, that was reported.
Meyer also believes the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local issues, including the background of Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, played a part in the raid.
HOW UNUSUAL IS THIS?
It’s very rare. In 2019, San Francisco police raided the home of Bryan Carmody, an independent journalist, seeking to find his source for a story about a police investigation into the sudden death of a local public official, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. San Francisco paid a settlement to Carmody as a result of the raid.
Police have confiscated material at newspapers, but usually because they are seeking evidence to help investigate someone else’s crime, not a crime the journalists were allegedly involved in, said Clay Calvert, an expert on First Amendment law at the American Enterprise Institute. For example, when police raided the offices of James Madison University’s student newspaper in 2010, they seized photos as part of a probe into a riot.
The Marion raid “appears to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, and basic human decency,” said Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.”
COULD THIS BE LEGAL?
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution asserts that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Things get murkier when you get into specifics.
Journalists gathering material for use in possible stories are protected by the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980. For one thing, police need a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to conduct such a raid, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Cody acknowledged this, in an email to The Associated Press, but he said there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.”
Gabe Rottman, lawyer for the Reporters Committee, said he’s not sure Cody’s reason for believing the so-called suspect exception applies here. In general, it does not apply to material used in the course of reporting, like draft stories or public documents that are being used to check on a news tip.
The search warrant in this case was “significantly overbroad, improperly intrusive and possibly in violation of federal law,” the Reporters Committee said in a letter to Cody that was signed by dozens of news organizations.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER SO MUCH TO JOURNALISTS?
It’s important to speak out in this case “because we’re just seeing in way too many countries around the world that democracy is being eroded bit by bit,” said Kathy Kiely, Lee Hills chair of Free Press Studies at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
Anger toward the press in the United States, often fueled by politicians, has grown in recent years, leading to concern about actions being taken to thwart news coverage.
In April, an Oklahoma sheriff was among several county officials caught on tape discussing killing journalists and lynching Black people. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond later said there was no legal grounds to remove McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy.
In June, two reporters for the Asheville Blade newspaper in North Carolina were found guilty of misdemeanor trespassing. The Freedom of Press Foundation said the reporters were arrested while covering a police sweep of a homeless encampment and arrested for being in the park after its 10 p.m. closing.
WHAT SUPPORT IS THERE FOR THE POLICE ACTION?
Not everyone in Kansas was quick to condemn the raid.
Jared Smith, a lifelong Marion resident, said the newspaper is too negative and drives away businesses, including a day spa run by his wife that recently closed. He cited repeated stories in the Record about his wife’s past — she had once modeled nude for a magazine years ago.
“The newspaper is supposed to be something that, yes, reports the news, but it’s also a community newspaper,” Smith said. “It’s not, ‘How can I slam this community and drive people away?’ “
Meyer disputed Smith’s description of how the newspaper handled his wife’s past and said the newspaper did not target her.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation issued a statement Sunday stating that Director Tony Mattivi “believes very strongly that freedom of the press is a vanguard of American democracy.” But the statement added that search warrants are common at places like law enforcement offices and city, county and state offices.
“No one is above the law, whether a public official or a representative of the media,” the statement read.
Meyer said the agency has not contacted him or anyone at the newspaper.
“I don’t know what they’ve been told, but they haven’t talked to us,” he said. “They’ve heard one side of the story and haven’t heard the other one.”
