(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Police Raid On Kansas’ Marion County News Violates Freedom of the Press; 98-Year-Old Co-Pub Dies [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-15

During the presidency of Donald Trump attacks on the First Amendment, including freedom of the press were ratcheted up. Hardly a Trump rally would pass without Trump calling out reporters for their lies, and accusing them of being enemies of the state. On January 6, 2021, journalists were in the MAGA crosshairs. According to records compiled by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, “at least 18 journalists were assaulted while covering events inside and out of the Capitol. Reporters were forced to flee a media staging area as rioters hurled and broke news equipment, pitching it into a pyre to burn (the breaking part was successful; the burning part less so) (https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/years-later-jan-6-fallout-continues-for-journalists/).

Over the years, reporters have been harassed, their homes vandalized and have received death threats. In 2018, an attack on the Capital Gazette resulted in the deaths of four journalists.

It is not unusual for small town newspapers to be threatened with advertiser boycotts that would basically kill their publications.

Last week, freedom of the press took another hit in Marion, Kansas, when the Marion Police Department raided the home and office of Eric Meyer, the publisher of the local newspaper, the Marion County Record.

According toNewsweek’s Khaleda Rahman,“The raid … was one of a number that the Marion Police Department conducted after local restaurant owner Kari Newell accused the Recordof illegally obtaining information about her during a council meeting earlier this week” (https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/13/us/kansas-marion-county-newspaper-police-raid/index.html).

Rahman noted that “Officers seized computers, including the newspaper's file service, and personal cell phones of staff members, the Record reported.”(Video of the raid can be found @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-8ZjQF13qw.)

CNN reported Meyer “believes [the] raid was prompted by a story published Wednesday about a local business owner. Authorities countered they are investigating what they called ‘identity theft’ and ‘unlawful acts concerning computers,’ according to a search warrant.

“Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been published online, and your public statements to the press, there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search —particularly when other investigative steps may have been available — and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement’s ability to conduct newsroom searches,” a letter sent by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, said.

According to Reason, “The paper attributes the Saturday death of 98-year-old co-owner Joan Meyer to stress from the raids on her home and the paper's office. ‘Stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal police raids…Meyer, otherwise in good health for her age, collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at home,’ the paper reports. It adds that she "had not been able to eat" or sleep on Friday after the raids.

"Based on the reporting so far, the police raid of theMarion County Recordon Friday appears to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, and basic human decency," Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement.

Over the weekend, “More than 30 news organizations have banded together to condemn Friday’s police raids,” The Wrap’s Stephanie Kalol reported (https://www.thewrap.com/marion-county-record-newspaper-raid-condemned-journalists/). “The journalism group, which is being led by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, wrote in part, ‘Newsroom searches and seizures are among the most intrusive actions law enforcement can take with respect to the free press, and the most potentially suppressive of free speech by the press and the public.’”

The story of Elijah P. Lovejoy

In reporting on the news from Marion, Heather Cox Richardson, a historian and author who produces the always informative

Letters from an American, told the story of Elijah P. Lovejoy, a man “who [in the 1830s] had been publishing antislavery articles in the St. Louis Observer, [and] decided to move from the slave state of Missouri across the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois,” where in a free state he would be able to publish anti-slavery content more freely. In a statement to his neighbors, Lovejoy said: “As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write and to publish whatever I please, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.”

Things did not go well for Lovejoy. Critics wanted him to cease publishing stories that “offended” them. But Lovejoy kept at it. The, “on August 21, 1837, a mob drove off the office staff of the Alton Observerby throwing rocks through the windows. Then, as soon as the staff had fled, the mob broke into the newspaper’s office and destroyed the press and all the type.”

Lovejoy ordered a replacement press and that too was trashed. He ordered another, and a mob broke into the warehouse where it had been delivered, and threw it in the river.

Heather Cox Richardson:

When yet another press arrived in early November, Lovejoy had it placed in a warehouse on the riverbank. That night, about thirty men attacked the building, demanding the press be handed over to them. The men inside refused and fired into the crowd, wounding some of the attackers. The mob pulled back but then returned with ladders that enabled them to set fire to the building’s roof. When Lovejoy stepped out of the building to see where the attackers were hiding, a man shot him dead. As the rest of the men in the warehouse ran to safety, the mob rushed into the building and threw the press out of the window. It broke to pieces when it hit the shore, and the men threw the pieces into the Mississippi River.

While the stakes in Marion, Kansas are not as high as the events surrounding the murder of Lovejoy, nevertheless, the threat to freedom of the press continues to be an ever-present danger.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/15/2187375/-Police-Raid-On-Kansas-Marion-County-News-Violates-Freedom-of-the-Press-98-Year-Old-Co-Pub-Dies

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/