Raid on Marion County, Kansas, newspaper shows why would-be tyrants fear journalists | Opinion
It would be easy to view Friday’s police raid on a rural Kansas newsroom as another sign Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan for world domination is not the only threat to our democracy. It appears to violate the Privacy Protection Act, which explicitly protects materials journalists collect in the course of their work from fishing expeditions by authorities.
But let’s look at the bright side.
In some ways, local officials’ vendetta against Marion County Record owner and publisher Eric Meyer highlights the importance of local news coverage and the grit and dedication it takes keep it going against heavy economic odds.
After decades working at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, followed by a couple more on the journalism faculty at the University of Illinois, the silver-haired newsman could be enjoying retirement. Instead, he returned to the same newspaper where his dad once worked.
Meyer and his newsroom represent one of the green shoots sprouting in a nation of expanding news deserts, where they are the watchdogs of communities too small or too remote to attract the attention of big metropolitan dailies or TV stations. They do stories that make a difference to those communities. Today’s Marion County Record webpage features stories about an alarming rise in property tax delinquencies, the arrest of an accused child pornographer and a heartwarming feature about a 10-year-old guitarist who regularly jams with a centenarian at a local senior center.
Apparently this sort of work isn’t appreciated by Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, who OK’d the raid on the Marion County Record and Meyer’s home — where, according to the Record, the zealous local constabulary confiscated the router that ran his 98-year-old mother’s Alexa speaker. The Record reported that Joan Meyer collapsed and died at her home Saturday afternoon.
Happily, others feel differently. Two journalism trade outlets, Nieman Reports and Editor & Publisher have recently reported a promising trend: veteran news reporters and editors coming out of retirement to report on local news. Meyer was ahead of this curve when, in 1998, he purchased the Record, which serves a community of some 12,000 souls.
This kind of altruism can have an enormous impact. Democracy’s muscles atrophy when there aren’t reporters around to keep them in shape. Case in point: Missouri School of Journalism professor Fred Anklam, who helped start Mississippi Today after retiring from USA Today, tells a story of getting a call from a cub reporter dispatched to cover a state commission hearing. The young journalist said staffers insisted the meeting was private. Anklam had to school both the rookie — and policymakers — that, in fact, public business must be open to the public.
According to the Kansas Reflector, the chain of events that led to the police raid on the Marion County Record began with a local restaurant owner kicking the newspaper’s reporters out of a meeting with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner. The rest reads like an all-too typical saga of a local good ol’ boys (and gals) network trying to keep pesky folks from questioning how we do things in these here parts.
That’s why local journalists who put principle above personal popularity are important. It’s why there’s a bipartisan congressional effort to provide tax credits for local news providers. It’s why Eric Meyer should sue. We’re betting it will be a win for democracy.
Kathy Kiely is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. She is joined in this op-ed by fellow Knight Chairs Stephen Wolgast of the University of Kansas, Damon Kiesow of the Missouri School of Journalism and John Affleck of Penn State University.
