Kansas Police Raid Newspaper Office, Reporter Injured

Facts

• Marion County, Kansas police Friday raided the office of the local newspaper — the Marion County Record — as well as the homes of its journalists and 98-year-old co-owner Joan Meyer. Meyer died at her home a day after, with the paper reporting the raid had left her "stressed beyond her limits."¹
• Police obtained a search warrant to collect devices used to access the Kansas Department of Revenue's records website, as well as those about restaurant owner Kari Newell, who alleged that the outlet illegally obtained information about her during a city council meeting last Monday.²
• After a source leaked the documents about Newell to the Record — which could have cost her liquor license — Eric Meyer, who co-owns the paper with his mother, didn't publish the story because he questioned the source. Instead, he sent the information to the police, after which Newell reported his paper to the police.³
• While Newell alleges the information collected on her 2008 driving-under-the-influence conviction was illegally obtained, the Record argued it received it unsolicited and sought to confirm it with online records. The search warrant signed by a local judge cites Newell as the victim of the newspaper's alleged crimes.⁴
• Newell also argues the paper's investigation of her was retribution for her asking Eric Meyer to leave Kari's Kitchen — the coffee shop she operates — after he used the establishment to host Republican US Congressman Jake LaTurner.⁵
• The paper argued that the raid violated the federal Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits most searches of journalists and newsrooms. However, Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody argued that the law doesn't apply "when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing."⁶

Sources: ¹The Guardian, ²FOX News, ³Daily Mail, ⁴NBC, ⁵Red State, and ⁶USA Today.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Poynter. The police raid of the Marion County Record is about way more than a small-town newspaper in Middle America. It's about police overreach and the First Amendment. Police used brutal authoritarian tactics to raid and destroy everything the newspaper had, to the point of scaring a 98-year-old woman to her death. America's First Amendment Rights are under attack, and the police's brutal sacking of the Record is a sobering reminder of the threat to democracy.
• Narrative B, as provided by TMZ. While some activists and journalists are trying to spin the police raid of the Marion County Record as a fascist attack on the freedom of the press, the evidence mainly points to it being a petty dispute between a local resident and the paper. Kari Newell was upset that the Record had access to her driving-while-intoxicated report and told the police that the paper obtained it illegally. The police then got a warrant and investigated the situation. The authorities may have gotten too aggressive, but let's not compare this situation to the stuff of authoritarian regimes.