We have people telling us that the jack boots are on the way…..dismiss their thoughts if you will but think about this incident in Kansas…..
Police officers and sheriff’s deputies raided the offices of a Kansas newspaper on Friday, taking computers and cellphones, apparently in response to a confidential source providing documents to the paper’s staff. The officers seized “everything we have,” said Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the Marion County Record. The message of the raid was clear, Meyer said, per the Kansas Reflector: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.” With the equipment gone, Meyer said he’s not sure how the weekly’s staff will be able to send the next edition to press on Tuesday night.
The Record had run news articles about Kari Newell, a restaurant owner, having been convicted of drunken driving and continuing to drive without a license. Its reporters were expelled from a public session with Republican US Rep. Jake LaTurner, though he had invited them, by Newell last week, which the Record published a story about here. The officers brought a search warrant with them for the raid, which involved the City of Marion’s entire police force, but it seems to be in violation of federal law—which requires law enforcement officers to subpoena materials, not just seize them. The magistrate judge who signed the warrant did not answer a request by the Reflector for comment. Nor did the police chief immediately respond to a request by Courthouse News Service.
Police went to Meyer’s home at the same time with the warrant, which lists allegations of identity theft and unlawful use of a computer. The executive director of the Kansas Press Association said the police raid is unprecedented in the state. “An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” Emily Bradbury said. “This cannot be allowed to stand.” Meyer, whose journalism career has included nearly a half-century at the Milwaukee Journal and the University of Illinois, said he’s never heard of such a raid. “It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” he said, and “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”
This raid has caused one death….a 98 year old mother…..
The day after police raided the office of the Kansas newspaper she co-owned, along with her own home, Joan Meyer collapsed and died. Meyer co-owned the Marion County Record with her son Eric Meyer, the paper’s publisher, and along with the newspaper office, police also descended on their home Friday. According to the Record, Joan Meyer, who was 98 and “otherwise in good health for her age,” watched in tears as police seized her computer as well as a router used by her Alexa smart speaker (leaving her unable to use it for assistance, the paper notes), left a mess of cords tangled on the floor, and pawed through her son’s papers. She wasn’t able to eat or sleep after that, the paper says, and on Saturday, she collapsed at her home and died. The paper says the raids contributed to Meyer’s death, leaving her “stressed beyond her limits.”
- “Died in the line of duty”: In an opinion piece at the Kansas City Star, Melinda Henneberger agrees with the Record‘s assessment, writing of Meyer, a journalist since 1953, “It is not hyperbole to say that this attack on the people’s right to know appears to have killed her.” Henneberger says that one of the last comments Meyer made was to tell a colleague of the police raid, “These are Hitler tactics.”
- News organizations condemn raid: Thirty-four media outlets, including the AP, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, signed a four-page letter to Marion’s police chief condemning the raid and calling on the department to immediately return all the materials that were seized, CNN reports. “There appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search … 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,” the letter reads.
- Business owner’s involvement: The raid appears to be connected to local businesswoman Kari Newell. The Record received a tip that Newell had her driver’s license suspended after a DUI and yet continued to drive without a license; ultimately, suspecting the information had been leaked “as part of legal sparring” between Newell and her estranged husband amid divorce proceedings, the newspaper decided against publishing a story about it. (It did, however, publish a story about Newell kicking its reporters out of a congressman’s open forum and a follow-up story about Newell herself, at a city council meeting, falsely accusing the paper of having illegally obtained the DUI info about her; that story goes into great detail about the timeline of the paper’s involvement with Newell.)
- Business owner’s statement: Newell released a lengthy statement on Facebook denying any involvement in the police raid. “It’s truly beyond me how people think I alone am capable of having a newspaper raided. Even in small town America we have the same processes any larger city does to make this happen,” she writes, going on to allege that identity theft was involved in gaining information about her.
- As for those allegations: The newspaper denies Newell’s allegations, and explains that a reporter legally used her own personal information to obtain the same information that had been received in the tip, which was available publicly—and that, after deciding not to publish a story about the matter, the paper instead notified local police about the allegations that Newell drove without a license. Local police then alerted Newell to what was going on, and the raid followed.
- Police respond: According to the Kansas Reflector, the Marion Police Department posted its own statement to Facebook Saturday claiming that while federal law protects journalists from searches and seizures, that law doesn’t apply if reporters are suspected of a crime (in this case, apparently, the supposed identity theft Newell alleges took place). “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” the statement reads.
https://www.alternet.org/marion-county-record/
I know I bitch about the media and its antics but with all that aside I still believe in a free press….and that the people have a right to know the whole story.
SO if you do not believe we are heading in the wrong direction then maybe you should open your eyes and pay closer attention to what is happening in our beloved country.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Once you start closing down the Press, any moral high ground is lost along with those closures. It is the tip of a very large iceberg waiting to crash into ‘democracy’.
Best wishes, Pete.
Well said…..this will be an interesting story to follow. chuq
Thanx Ned…this story needs to be out there for all to see….your help is appreciated chuq
Yes, pay attention and know that it is too late to save the day because we have crossed the Rubicon and there is no turning back now…
Let’s see just how far this is taken before the Rubicon…..chuq
Kansas…!
I shared this to Facebook. I read the material in the attached links, including the police post on Facebook, where most comments were against their raid tactics.
Thanx Doug…I am not on FB so your help and heads up is appreciated chuq
Freedom of the press is an issue that goes back to the origins of our country. This raid smacks of the worst of our times for how it was handled in ultra-conservative Kansas. Your post shines light on an event that needs to be exposed everywhere it can be exposed.
Thanx Doug…I am trying. chuq
Yep….not only do they hate abortions but a free press as well chuq
The Right Wing MAGA bunch also claim the country is going down the tubes, albeit for different reasons. Oddly, that seems a common observation for both extremes. Here’s my thought… it’s the old adage that those who serve the public, either in elected or appointed office, they serve in the in public trust. Obviously, many of those holding such office in the public trust can and do indeed violate that trust for one reason or another.. then they can be taken to task within our justice system afforded by the Constitution. Much of that are some aspect of violating a freedom or freedoms. Again, the strength of our American democracy is using the Constitution to seek remedy. I don’t see the country “going down the tubes” because of some misjudgments in applying the law by those holding a public trust, seeming to look bad or appearing to emulate authoritarian regimes of days past in history. This press publication has remedy in court, up to and including seeking monetary damages for loss of revenue. I will worry about the country “going down the tubes” when the justice system, which includes appeals, fails to hold such government officials accountable. Context is always important to moderate emotionalism… and fear.
Doug I agree with using the Constitution but I am not so sure the Supreme Court will do anything to protect free press….this is worrying chuq
Well, we even have remedy there as well provided by the Constitution. If SCOTUS turns completely renegade Congress can take certain actions. But by that time the public outcry would be substantial. Now, if you want to assign some level of grand conspiracy, across all institutions, that buy into some authoritarian plan to circumvent the Constitution… well, the country would literally be down the tubes by that time.
Then Congress needs to act to head off any antics….but will they? I doubt it. chuq
Here’s the thing… anyone of us in the security and comfort of our own homes is vulnerable. The local cops can come in at any moment and size all your computer stuff and anything else they might want. You are hardly going to stop them because something in the back of your mind says to respect their authority.. plus they have the guns and kevlar (and hopefully a subpoena). They climb into your computer and look into all your personal stuff.. including that “secret” file directory with your particular porn kink. Some press person listening to a police scanner gets wind of the operation.. and starts tapping into their sources to get the next story. They find out your name.. and catch wind on the “stuff” found on your PC.. especially the porn stuff. Suddenly you are a pervert… whether the material is legal or not. They also uncover your posts and political rants and now “subversion” is under your name. Then.. Ooops… the cops hit the wrong house.
Back in the 70’s before computers, I had a rather large home library of historical and reference material. I had heard on the news of the occasional person’s home having been raided by the cops and the inventory of stuff found ended up as public knowledge…. and the person having public image issues as a result. I gazed around at my library one day to critical think how I might be described (stereotyped) based on the books on my shelf. Being a contemporary history buff I had a number of Nazi-related books… Mein Kampf, the memoirs of ex-Spandau Nazis, Shirer’s “Rise and Fall”, some secret OSS Hitler profile.. I even had a book or two on Russian history.. Lenin… the Romanovs. Of course, all this was on the same shelf as “The History of Television”, the multi-volume set of Abraham Lincoln Papers, the works of Dickens, Churchill’s books, Shakespeare, “Profiles in Courage”, my psychology and business course books, Amateur Radio Handbook, Boy Scout Handbook, a book on algebra (ugh), programming in Basic….. and even a King James of the Holy Bible. Yet one could easily interpret I was some sort of neo-nazi commie (if that even exists). I didn’t even have a stash of old Playboy mags in a secret box in the garage.
Now.. any secret porn stashes of magazines in the garage rafters or computer hard drive file directories long since decades of the past… one could still stereotype my own threat to humanity as being any threat they wish to assign. This extends to any of us. Fortunately I have never been the victim of any such police raids or subsequent public outcry calling for my neighborhood eviction. But this doesn’t mean we are all not vulnerable to a police “mistake” that ends up giving us an unjustified tainted reputation.
They would have a field day at my house…..chuq
Yeah.. if they found anything sexual in which to hold me up to public scorn and ridicule as a perv, that would be an honor at this stage.
I agree….chuq
Is it a mistake or is it a result of some kind of training that emphasizes crowd control operations?
It was trying to silence dissent I think. chuq
I do not think that militarization of police is all that good for public relations.
Me either but every president in the last couple of cycles had been part of that problem. chuq
What a crazyness and a demolition of freedom. Thanks for sharing, Chuq! Best wishes, Michael
You are welcome and thank you for helping spread the story. chuq