It’s no trade secret that newspapers these days — especially small, hyper-local papers — are having a hard enough time doing their work while making ends meet.
That’s why everyone can understand that performing our important societal job of getting the news out to readers would be made crazily even harder if the local police department were to raid our offices, confiscate our computers and cell phones and basically say, “Good luck getting that next edition out, journos.”
Yet that’s precisely what happened to a small newspaper in Kansas last week when officers whose chief had a dog in the fight — he was under investigation by the paper — most likely unconstitutionally showed up at the Marion County Record in rural Marion, pop. 1,900, and took all of their equipment while the reporters and editors were on deadline, as we always are.
The paper had recently looked into the drunk driving record — a public record — of a local restaurant owner and business leader, and was starting to look into allegations that the police chief had left his job as an officer in Kansas City, Missouri.
Uncomfortable for the parties involved as they may be, these are the kinds of stories that newspapers do, in the public interest.
And we publish such stories with the understanding that in this country, with the press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, it is our right to do so without interference from law enforcement agencies and powerful people in our communities.
Wednesday, a local prosecutor said that the police raid and confiscation of equipment was not supported by any evidence of a crime, and the paper is fighting to get the tools of its trade back into its office.
Meanwhile, few blockbuster, multi-part investigations by bigger news organizations could make us as proud of our journalistic colleagues as the ways in which the Record’s tiny staff got their paper out at all this week.
“Forced to rewrite stories and reproduce ads from scratch,” the Associated Press reports, “the four-person newsroom toiled overnight to print Wednesday’s edition, with a defiant front-page headline that read: “SEIZED … but not silenced.” Under the 2-inch-tall typeface, they published stories on the raid and the influx of support the weekly newspaper has since received.”
Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey said his review of police seizures from the Marion County Record offices and the publisher’s home found “insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized,” the AP added.
He demanded that the equipment be returned to the paper.
“You cannot let bullies win,” Editor and Publisher Eric Meyer said. “We have a staff that’s very experienced, including myself, and we’re not going to take crap.”
Meyer’s house was also searched by police, and he has said that the stress from the raid of his home caused the death Saturday of his 98-year-old mother, Joan, the paper’s co-owner.
Asked if the newspaper’s investigation of the police chief’s background may have had anything to do with the decision to raid it, Bernie Rhodes, the newspaper’s attorney, responded: “I think it is a remarkable coincidence if it didn’t.”
These are perilous times for newspapers in America even without government harassment attempting to stifle what we do. Outrages like this one cannot help but make our work harder. And yet, the outpouring of public support for the Marion County Record is heartening. With a usual weekly circulation of 4,000 print copies, the Record has seen 2,000 new subscribers sign up since the police raid. It published an edition on the fly relying on old index cards for ads and formerly junked computers for stories. The first rough draft of history won’t be silenced by the whims of the rich and the powerful.
—The Editorial Board, Southern California News Group
