The Marion County Record is a small, family-owned newspaper in Marion, Kansas — about 60 miles north of Wichita. It has seven employees and a circulation of about 4,000.
But this little publication is at the center of a controversy that involves nothing less than democracy, press freedoms and the First Amendment.
On Friday, the town’s entire five-person police department, along with two sheriff’s deputies, raided the newspaper offices and the home of the paper’s co-owner and publisher. That co-owner, Eric Meyer, told the Kansas Reflector that the police took “everything we have.”
On Saturday, a day after the raid, Joan Meyer, Eric Meyer’s mother and the 98-year-old co-owner of the paper, collapsed and died at her home. The Record said Joan Meyer had been “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief.”
The article went on to say she hadn’t been able to eat or sleep after the raid and said, “She tearfully watched during the raid as police not only carted away her computer and router used by an Alexa smart speaker but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investments statements to photograph them.”
The editorial boards of The Wichita Eagle and The Kansas City Star wrote, “We could express our outrage at what is happening here. But we probably couldn’t say it any better than the 98-year-old Joan Meyer, a newspaperwoman since 1953: ‘These are Hitler tactics and something has to be done.’ It turned out to be one of the last things she ever said. Mrs. Meyer complained of feeling upset and stressed by the invasion of her home when she spoke to us on Friday. Late Saturday, we received the sad news that she had collapsed at home and passed away.”
So what happened? What led to all this?
The New York Times’ Steven Lee Myers and Benjamin Mullin wrote, “The searches, conducted on Friday, appeared to be linked to an investigation into how a document containing information about a local restaurateur found its way to the local newspaper — and whether the restaurant owner’s privacy was violated in the process. The editor of the newspaper said the raids may have had more to do with tensions between the paper and officials in Marion, a town of about 2,000 north of Wichita, over prior coverage.”
The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, said law enforcement was allowed to search for and seize items including “documents and records pertaining to Kari Newell.”
CNN’s Sarah Moon reports that earlier this month, Eric Meyer attended a public meet-and-greet with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner at a coffee shop run by Newell. Meyer and Record reporter Phyllis Zorn were asked by the police chief, under a request from Newell, to leave.
Newell confirmed to Moon that she did ask the reporters to leave, saying, “When they came into the establishment, I quietly and politely asked them to exit. I didn’t feel that their constituents needed to be exposed to any risk of being misquoted.”
That’s when the story took a turn. After the meeting, Meyer said Zorn received a tip about Newell allegedly driving without a valid driver’s license after a traffic offense in 2008. And the next week, Newell was at a city council meeting trying to get approval to operate a liquor-serving establishment.
The Associated Press’ John Hanna and Margery A. Beck wrote, “The next week at a city council meeting, Newell publicly accused the newspaper of using illegal means to get information on the status of her driver’s license following a 2008 drunken driving conviction and other driving violations. The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it verified through public online records. It eventually decided not to run a story, because it wasn’t sure the source who supplied it had obtained it legally. But the newspaper did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell herself confirmed she’d had a DUI conviction and that she had continued to drive even after her license was suspended.”
It appears the newspaper acted responsibly, did nothing illegal or even questionable and yet was still raided by the police. Meyer told The New York Times that the paper has angered some local officials for its reporting on the employment history of Marion Police Department Chief Gideon Cody.
Meyer told CNN, “I’ve never seen anything like this, not in America. This was an atomic flyswatter. They wanted to swat us, and they tried to do so. Our problem is, we don’t have any of our logs of advertising, the ads that were prepared, and things that were ordered.”
Meyer told The New York Times, “If we don’t fight back and we don’t win in fighting back, it’s going to silence everybody,”
In a statement to CNN, Cody said, “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated.”
Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, told CNN, “Based on the reporting so far, the police raid of the Marion County Record on Friday appears to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, and basic human decency. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists president Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement, “The raid by police on the Marion County Record is deeply disturbing. Local news providers are essential in holding power to account — and they must be able to report freely, without fear of authorities’ overreach. This kind of action by police — which we sadly see with growing frequency worldwide — has a chilling effect on journalism and on democracy more broadly. The actions of the police and the judiciary in this case must be thoroughly and swiftly investigated.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 34 news organizations — including The Associated Press, CBS News, Gannett, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The New York Times, Reuters and The Washington Post — sent a letter addressed to Chief Cody. The letter said, “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.”
Press advocates — and anyone who cares about press freedoms and democracy — will keep a close eye on this case. But serious and irreparable damage has already been done.
