Summary:
- Police raid on weekly newspaper's newsroom in Marion, Kansas, shocks press freedom advocates.
- Officers from Marion Police Department seized equipment and personal belongings during the raid.
- Dispute with local restaurant owner Carrie Newell linked to the raid.
- More than 30 media groups protest the action, citing protections for journalists.
- Raid prompts discussions on press freedom and potential legal actions.
Surveillance video captures the moment police raided the newsroom of a weekly newspaper and seized equipment in Marion, Kansas. Seven officers from the Marion Police Department searched the offices of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher and co-owner Eric Meyer on Friday. They took a laptop and my mother's computer and my, from my mother's house and the computer of the vice mayor from her house. In addition, they took the vice mayor, mine and two of our reporters' personal cell phones and have not told us when they're giving them back. A search warrant links the raid to a dispute between the local paper and local restaurant owner Carrie Newell, who accuses the paper of invading her privacy. She says journalists illegally accessed details about her and her driving record. The newspaper said it used information verified by public records.
One day after the raid, Meyer's 98-year-old mother Joanne, a co-owner of the paper, died. Her son believes the stress of the raid is to blame. More than 30 media groups have protested the action in a letter to the Marion Police Department. There are in fact laws that protect journalists from this type of egregious overreach. In most cases, when it gets to this point, when a journalist's work is being called into issue, the reporter or the news organization has to get subpoenaed. The Marion Police Department did not reply to VOA's email request and comment, but in a Facebook statement, it defended its actions. A raid of the scale against the Marion County record is pretty unprecedented.
So at the very least, it's extremely rare. It might be the first instance of it happening in exactly this way. The entire police department of Marion, Kansas, came down on their offices as well as the home of the co-owner Joan Meyer. The raid has shocked press freedom advocates across the nation, but data shows the incident is not isolated. There have been several other search and seizure cases in the U.S. in recent years. These tactics are often used to silence the media and to keep citizens in the dark about what's happening in their communities. Meyer says the newspaper plans to sue the police department and possibly others, calling the raid an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment's free press guarantee. For Jessica Jareet, Amy Katz, VOA News.