Raid of Small Kansas Newspaper Raises Free Press Concerns

A small city in Kansas has turn into a battleground over the First Amendment, after the native police power and county sheriff’s deputies raided the workplace of the Marion County Record.

Raids of news organizations are exceedingly uncommon within the United States, with its lengthy historical past of authorized protections for journalists. At the Record, a family-owned paper with a circulation of about 4,000, the police seized computer systems, servers and cellphones of reporters and editors. They additionally searched the house of the publication’s proprietor and semiretired editor in addition to the house of a metropolis councilwoman.

The searches, performed on Friday, gave the impression to be linked to an investigation into how a doc containing details about a neighborhood restaurateur discovered its option to the native newspaper — and whether or not the restaurant proprietor’s privateness was violated within the course of. The editor of the newspaper mentioned the raids could have had extra to do with tensions between the paper and officers in Marion, a city of about 2,000 north of Wichita, over prior protection.

The raid is considered one of a number of latest circumstances of the native authorities taking aggressive actions in opposition to news organizations — a few of that are a part of a dwindling cohort left of their space to carry governments to account. And it matches a latest sample of strain being utilized to native newsrooms. One latest instance is the 2019 police raid of the house of Bryan Carmody, a contract journalist in San Francisco, who was reporting on the dying of Jeff Adachi, a longtime public defender.

“There’s a lot of healthy tension between the government and newspapers, but this?” Emily Bradbury, the chief director of the Kansas Press Association, mentioned in an interview in regards to the raid in Marion. She warned that the raid was a harmful assault in opposition to press freedom within the nation.

“This is not right, this is wrong, this cannot be allowed to stand,” she mentioned.

The newspaper’s proprietor and editor, Eric Meyer, mentioned in an interview that the newspaper had completed nothing unsuitable. The newspaper didn’t publish an article in regards to the authorities document, although Mr. Meyers mentioned it had obtained a replica from a confidential supply and considered one of its reporters had verified its authenticity utilizing the state’s data out there on-line.

In an e mail, Marion’s chief of police, Gideon Cody, defended the raid, which was earlier reported on-line by the Marion County Record and by Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news group.

“I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” Mr. Cody mentioned. He declined to debate the investigation intimately.

The Marion County Record is uncommonly aggressive for its measurement. Mr. Meyer mentioned that the newspaper, which has seven staff, has stoked the ire of some native leaders for its vigorous reporting on Marion County officers, together with asking questions on Mr. Cody’s employment historical past.

The paper is overseen by Mr. Meyer, who’s 69 and has had a protracted profession in journalism, working as a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal and a professor on the University of Illinois. He additionally has a household connection to the Marion County Record: His father, Bill, labored there for half a century starting in 1948, rising to be its prime editor.

In 1998, his household purchased the newspaper and two others close by — the Hillsboro Star-Journal and Peabody Gazette-Bulletin — from the earlier writer, the Hoch household, who had owned them for 124 years.

The dispute over the federal government document that led to the raid may not have turn into a problem apart from a tip that got here after a meet-and-greet held on Aug. 2 for the native congressman, Jake LaTurner, at Kari’s Kitchen, an institution owned by Kari Newell, a neighborhood restaurateur.

Ms. Newell requested the police chief to take away Mr. Meyer and a reporter, Phyllis Zorn, from the occasion, saying that she didn’t need them to attend.

After the newspaper revealed an article in regards to the episode, Ms. Zorn obtained a non-public message on Facebook, Mr. Meyer mentioned, from somebody who shared a letter to Ms. Newell from the Kansas Department of Revenue. The letter detailed the steps she wanted to take to revive her driver’s license, which had been suspended after a drunken driving quotation in 2008, based on the newspaper.

Last Monday, Ms. Newell appeared on the a City Council assembly searching for approval to function a liquor-serving institution. She accused the newspaper on the assembly of illegally acquiring the letter and giving it to a councilwoman, Ruth Herbel. Ms. Herbel, whose residence was additionally searched on Friday, didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Mr. Meyer mentioned that the newspaper had not shared the doc with Ms. Herbel. He added that Ms. Newell had later informed the newspaper that the discharge of the knowledge may need been associated to her ongoing divorce proceedings.

A search warrant for the raid, issued by a choose roughly an hour earlier than the search on Friday morning, mentions Ms. Newell and cited potential violations of legal guidelines involving identification theft and the unlawful use of a pc. The latter, amongst different issues, forbids utilizing a pc “with the intent to defraud or to obtain money, property, services or any other thing of value by means of false or fraudulent pretense or representation.”

A spokesperson for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which aids legal justice businesses statewide, mentioned that the Marion police approached the bureau to assist with an investigation into “illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information.”

Although news organizations are typically the targets of authorized actions by authorities officers, together with subpoenas searching for interview notes and different data, the search and seizure of the instruments to provide journalism are uncommon.

Seth Stern, advocacy director at Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of journalists and whistle-blowers, mentioned federal legislation allowed the police to go looking journalists when the authorities have possible trigger to imagine the journalists had dedicated a criminal offense unrelated to their journalism. That exception doesn’t apply, nevertheless, in a case the place the alleged crime is gathering the news, he mentioned. When journalists are suspected of committing crimes as a part of news gathering, the federal government’s choice is to serve a subpoena, which might be challenged in court docket earlier than it’s enforced.

“You can’t say, ‘I’m allowed to raid the newsroom because I’m investigating a crime,’ if the crime you’re investigating is journalism,” he added.

The police chief, Mr. Cody, who began within the job this spring, and Ms. Newell argued that journalists are topic to go looking in the event that they themselves are suspects within the offense being investigated. Ms. Newell mentioned that somebody had unlawfully used her identification to acquire non-public details about her on-line.

In a cellphone interview, Ms. Newell framed the dispute as an easy violation of her privateness by the newspaper reasonably than a First Amendment battle.

“There’s a huge difference between vindictive and vindication,” Ms. Newell mentioned. “I firmly believe that this was a vindictive move, full of malice. And I hope in the end, I receive vindication.”

The newspaper, which publishes weekly on Wednesdays, is scrambling to place out the following version with out most of its computer systems and servers, which contained articles in addition to adverts and public notices.

Mr. Meyer mentioned he had by no means skilled authorities strain like this.

“If we don’t fight back and we don’t win in fighting back, it’s going to silence everybody,” he mentioned.

He had returned full time to Marion in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic and stayed on, retiring from his college publish and spending extra time writing and enhancing for the newspaper, and dwelling together with his 98-year-old mom. He mentioned he doesn’t obtain a wage, although he receives an annual bonus if the corporate turns a revenue on the finish of the 12 months.

On Saturday, his mom died. In an article revealed on-line on Saturday night, the Record related Joan Meyer’s dying to the search, writing that it had made her “stressed beyond her limits.” The headline: “Illegal raids contribute to death of newspaper co-owner.”

Jack Begg contributed analysis.