‘SEIZED ... but not silenced’: Kansas newspaper publishes following decried police raid
The front page of the Marion County Record on Wednesday documented a rare episode in American history and let readers know that their small-town weekly newspaper is not going anywhere.
“SEIZED ... but not silenced,” the paper in central Kansas announced.
The edition was the first to hit newsstands after Marion’s entire five-officer police force on Friday raided the office of the family-owned Record and the home of its publisher. The searches were condemned across the world by free speech advocates.
Officers and sheriff’s deputies seized journalists’ computers, cellphones and reporting materials, which made putting out Wednesday’s paper before midnight an ordeal, as publisher and owner Eric Meyer put it.
“We were going to do it even if we had to hand write it on pieces of paper,” he told CNN before 7 a.m. Wednesday.
In a turn of events Wednesday, the prosecutor in Marion County withdrew the search warrants executed at the newsroom and Meyer’s home, which means the seized materials will be returned to the newspaper.
The town of fewer than 2,000 people has become a focal point of a national controversy over First Amendment rights and what many see as frightening law enforcement overreach. Officers appeared to be looking for evidence about how the paper obtained information that a local restaurateur, who applied for a liquor license, lost her driver’s license over a DUI in 2008.
The paper’s main story Wednesday told of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation taking over the case from local police. The state agency said it would “review all prior steps taken” during the probe.
Featured at the bottom of the front page, a second story was about the “global” support for the paper.
The edition was the first out since the death of Eric Meyer’s 98-year-old mother Joan Meyer, who co-owned, and continued to write for, the newspaper. She collapsed and died a day after the raid, which her son said contributed to her death.
Bernie Rhodes, an attorney for the Record who also represents The Star, said getting out the paper was a way to honor her.
“It was an all hands on deck operation,” he said Wednesday.
The head of the Kansas Press Association volunteered as a receptionist Tuesday so every member of the staff could contribute to finishing the paper, Rhodes said. Employees had to recreate classified ads and legal notices that were on the seized computers.
The town’s matriarchal newswoman was incensed about the raid that Rhodes said violated federal law.
When two officers knocked Friday on Joan Meyer’s home, where she lived for 70 years, Eric Meyer assumed it was her “Meals on Wheels” delivery. He said police made his mother’s final day “hell” by attacking the newsroom she devoted five decades of her life to.
“How dare they,” he said.
