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‘But I’ve Seen It All In A Small Town’
The title for this essay is one line from John Mellencamp’s song Small Town. There are advantages to living in a small town. Everybody knows everybody in town. There are disadvantages to living in a small town. Everybody knows everybody in town.
The small town of Marion, Kansas, has made the big time in the media. A town of 1,922 people is in the spotlight for a Constitutional Freedom of the Press issue.
MARION, Kan. (AP) — A small newspaper and a police department in Kansas are at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech as the newspaper struggled Monday to publish its next edition, days after police raided its office and the home of its owner and publisher.
Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones from the publisher and staff of the Marion County Record in Friday’s raid. On Monday, Kansas state authorities confirmed they are also involved in a criminal probe of the newspaper over allegations that it illegally obtained and used personal information about a local business owner.
There is a backstory involving the Marion County Record and the residents of the city of Marion. Marion is the county seat of Marion County. I’m not sure why the City of Marion, which covers 2.97 square miles, needs their own police force. It is the county seat, and I would think that the county sheriff’s office could handle police services for the city.
The relationship between the newspaper and some of the residents, and the police department is a bit more complicated than a Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra movie.
Outrage over the raids
Friday’s raids have been widely condemned by press freedom watchdogs as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly called the raids “concerning.” An attorney for the newspaper deemed the searches and seizures illegal and said the police department’s action “offends the constitutional protections the founding fathers gave the free press.” The Society of Professional Journalists pledged $20,000 toward the newspaper’s legal defense.
I think the raid was not a very smart move by the police department. The safest way to deal with journalists is simply saying no comment. The next paragraph does not look good for the police chief.
Newspaper publisher and co-owner Eric Meyer said he believes the newspaper’s dogged coverage of local politics and Police Chief Gideon Cody’s record are the main reason for the raids. The Record was in the midst of digging into the newly hired chief’s past as a Kansas City, Missouri, police captain when the raids were carried out, Meyer said, although the newspaper hasn’t yet published a story.
The Marion County Record has some things in common with the big newspapers.
But some Marion residents hold a different view, accusing the newspaper of aggressive news coverage that has driven out businesses and painted a negative picture of the town of about 1,900 people.
The police searches appear to have been prompted by a complaint from a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, who accused the newspaper of invading her privacy after it obtained copies of her driving record, including a 2008 drunken driving conviction. Newell says the newspaper targeted her after she ordered Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant earlier this month during a political event.
The newspaper decided not to print the story, but it was mentioned in a city council meeting.
Meyer says a source gave the newspaper the information unsolicited and that reporters verified it through public online records. The paper eventually decided not to run a story, but it did report on Newell’s complaints about the newspaper’s investigation at a city council meeting, where she publicly confirmed she’d had a DUI conviction and that she drove after her license was suspended.
Another story
Jared Smith, a lifelong Marion resident, said Monday that he supports the police raid. Smith accused the newspaper of ruining his wife’s day spa business opened only a year ago by digging into her past and discovering she had appeared nude in a magazine years before. That fact was repeated in the Record more than 20 times over a six-month period, Smith said.
Must have been a slow news day drought that lasted for six months.
Small-town life has its share of problems. Human nature is flawed and the residents of Marion including the editor and reporters of the Marion County Record seem to have its share of flawed individuals. Gossip comes in whispers over the back fence. The Marion County Record makes sure no gossip will go unread, or unheard if you haven’t been in the backyard for a while.
Published in Journalism
Great post. So many levels of mystery. Sounds like very clever Mark Twainish fiction.
Trust me, Mr. Smith. Everyone to whom it would have made any difference knew after the first two or three times it appeared. Little businesses in small towns fail all the time, particularly the ones that don’t provide needed goods or services. Maybe you’re wife’s day spa folded because the clientele didn’t like the piped-in music.
Marion is in the middle of nowhere. It’s surrounded by small town that are also in the middle of nowhere. Nearest city is Wichita which is an hour away. How many small town people would attend a day spa, much less do it regularly to make a business viable? Was it next door to the Louis Vuitton, the Range Rover dealership and the halal meat market?
This wasn’t last Friday, it was the Friday before: August 11.
And I posted about it here, 6 days ago:
https://ricochet.com/1479718/small-town-newspaper-raided-by-local-police-editors-mother-dies-from-stress-and-more/
Seems to me an illegal raid is an illegal raid.
But, I guess we should always back the police, no matter what.
Receiving an anonymous tip is not a crime. Neither is accessing information on a publicly available database.
It sounds like the cops are in a spot of trouble, here.
Where is the search warrant? Which judge signed it?
Well the DA revoked the warrants I understand.
Freedom of the press doesn’t guarantee a classy press.
As I said in the post the raid was not very a good idea. If Kansas allows anyone to access DMV records, to include addresses that makes the raid look pretty bad for the police department.
Some states have restrictions on how much information is available from their DMV’s. I don’t know what the Kansas statutes state on how much info is available to the public.
I did not write the essay to defend the police department in Marion. It’s just a look at a small town that has some of the same divisions and faults as big cities.
I don’t know about Kansas either, but I know my name was published in the Fargo newspaper just for getting speeding tickets. So in some states at least, even minor traffic infractions are public records and make the newspapers.
Most newspaper reporters are slime. Aren’t they all leftists? Whatever hardships visit newspapers are richly deserved.
Blue City/Blue State reporters are probably pretty much all leftists, but the Marion County Record doesn’t seem to be in a blue city or a blue state.
So police should be able to confiscate the equipment of whatever offices are believed to employ left wing people, even when there are no crimes? That ought to lead to a healthy society.
I’d have to guess the chief ordered the raid not yet having sufficient command of Kansas law. Or maybe there is nothing better to do in Marion than stir things up. The paper doesn’t seem too adept at making friends.
Marion has about the same population as my college had enrollment. You couldn’t really avoid knowing everyone and a bit of their business.
The chief hadn’t been chief for very long, but he’d been a Kansas cop for quite a while. No excuse there. And certainly no excuse for the judge either.
Evil men with evil plans.
She died due to the stress of this.
Died.
Those men SHOULD be ashamed of themselves, but I imagine they are not.
The idea that the newspaper is in the wrong in any way in any of this is nuts. You don’t deal with speech you don’t like with armed invasions of people’s homes.
The federal law on violation of rights under color of law allows for the death penalty if serious injury or death results. It wouldn’t bother me if all the cops involved and the judge, end up hanging for this.
An example needs to be made.
And after this one, a whole lot more examples.
I don’t understand how you revoke a search warrant after a search is already done and the damage is done. Does that make the fruits of the search invalid? Does that then open the door for a wrongful death lawsuit for the old lady?
Something tells me that the Chief of Police in Marion thought he was a law unto himself.
That lawsuit was going to happen anyway. And “qualified immunity” only means the cops – and the judge – can’t be sued individually. But they can still sue the department, and the city. Of course, it’s possible that courts wouldn’t uphold immunity for any of them considering their gross misconduct. But even if it is upheld, that wouldn’t protect them from federal criminal charges of violation of rights under color of law. Since someone died, they could all hang for it. Or be gassed, whatever.
They really want that document.
And now I really want that document.
As always when [assumed] abuses like this happen, one wonders if these are exceptional or quotidian.
Conservatives prefer to keep government local, but just because locals can’t do corruption wholesale doesn’t mean they can’t go into high production.
Or – low maybe – someone claimed he, or more likely she, was being blackmailed and they are looking for the evidence of same and these warrants are more legitimate than they appear.
From what I understand, warrants aren’t allowed on newspapers/publishers/etc, period. They would have to go through a subpoena.
Also, they can’t even do that without actual probable cause. Someone just claiming “I wuz blackmailed!” doesn’t suffice. From what I’ve heard/read, the warrant application is pretty empty of actual cause.
It seems they were on a fishing expedition at best, and maybe just a threatening/intimidation expedition at worst.
And since there was a death along the way, under federal law they could at least theoretically face the death penalty.
I wonder too.
Probably the DA saw that he wasn’t going to prosecute anything with evidence that wouldn’t withstand judicial scrutiny and did his job.
From the sound of it, it wasn’t the DA who (improperly) requested the warrants anyway. The police chief did that. The DA wouldn’t have gotten it started based on little or nothing, and the judge shouldn’t have gone along.