What happened at the Marion County Record newspaper 10 months ago on Aug. 11, 2023, was not a raid.
The Kansas Reflector referred to it as a “takedown” in its April 1, 2024, edition.
However, In my opinion, it was a “police assault,” by some bad people disguised as law enforcement officers.
It was a “search and seizure.”
The term “raid” is a convenient shortcut term to thinking on what really happened. Many people in the media used it. Myself included.
The Marion County Record police assault was the main subject of a forum at the Kansas Press Association’s annual meeting Friday morning at the Oread Hotel near the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence.
“Does the Kansas Shield Law (protecting journalists and the 1st Amendment) work?,” was a question put to KPA members in the Oread Hotel Sunflower Ballroom by panelist Stephen Wolgast from the University of Kansas.
“Ask Eric Meyer,” Wolgast said.
Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record, was in attendance at the KPA meetings.
The Marion County Record captured several awards in several news categories. The newspaper overcame numerous obstacles to publishing the paper for the days immediately following the assault because their equipment and phones were seized.
“Seized!” was the main headline of the Marion County Record the day after the assault. The subhead read “but not silenced.”
Meyer said we should remember two words: “Qualified immunity.” There are several lawsuits pending in Marion County.
“There has to be some degree of responsibility from public officials,” Meyer said.
The KPA released the results of one-hour interviews with 19 Kansas reporters, editors and publishers from a joint effort by the University of Kansas (Wolgast) and University of Missouri (Nick Mathews) to gauge their reactions to the assault on the Marion County Record.
Wolgast, a Knight Chair in Audience and Community Engagement for News and professor of the practice of journalism at the William Allen White School of Journalist at the University of Kansas, and Mathews, assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, composed the summary from the 19 journalists’ reactions to the assault on the Marion County Record search and seizure.
The journalists were interviewed for the Zoom social media platform in January and February by research assistant Deborah Dwyer Ph.D. The journalists received $100 gift cards and were granted anonymity to speak freely.
Shock, disbelief, anger, disgust, righteous indignation and fear were the most common emotional responses from the 19 journalists as came out through their interviews.
Many of them were surprised that an assault, search and seizure like what happened with the Marion County Record could happen in a state like Kansas.
“There’s a sense that if they (law enforcement and officials from local and state government officials and even the federal government) can get away with some of this, it will be open season on all of us (journalists),” said the surveyed journalists.
Participants commonly said they had made no changes in their news practices as a result of the raid.
“Everybody was really coming together and really seemed to understand … the situation and why it was so scary and why it was so important for us.”
Several participants were unaware of the Kansas Shield Law. Also many had not additional information on legal protections such as the Privacy Protection Act.
The federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980 protects journalists and newsrooms from most searches by law enforcement, requiring police usually to issue subpoenas rather than search warrants.
The Federal PPA came about when Congress – with prompting from then-President Jimmy Carter – reacted to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, involving a police search of the Stanford University student newspaper.
According to the Freedom Forum, the Stanford Daily lost its challenge to the search, but Carter warned the decision threatened the “effective functioning of our free press,” and that the nation needed “new, stringent safeguards against federal, state and local governmental intrusion into First Amendment activities.”
A few of the 19 journalists who participated in the reaction interviews mentioned they had legal training through their journalism experiences or the KPA.
“I had no idea we had a shield law until Marion happened,” some of the journalists said.
Because of what happened with the Marion Record with their computers and phones being seized, some of the journalists said it as more important than ever for newspapers and journalists to have their files backed up — even off-site.
“In a newsroom that has no off-site backups, if the police raided us and took our equipment, we’d be kind of screwed.”
Like many journalists now, I work from home. Reporters from home use desktop computers, laptop computers and their phones. If police can “raid” a newsroom, they can raid a home. The bedroom and kitchen table can be “raided.” My home is my newsroom.
“So if my newsroom gets raided, it basically means my house is getting raided — and if my work phone is taken, that’s the same. That’s my personal phone,” said the journalists.
Participants in the KPA interviews said they saw no change in their relationships with local leaders. Some said that local leaders were trying to be more transparent with them.
“As we always say in the small towns, we can report on these people,” said the journalists. “Sure enough, we are going to run into them the next day or the next week on the street.”
For the record, I know one of the reporters at the Marion County Record who was a central figure in the assault — Phyllis Zorn.
She worked at the Enid News & Eagle as a reporter while I was a copy editor there. She also worked at newspapers in Kingman and Hays.
Zorn is seeking $950,000 in damages from the city of Marion, its former mayor, its former police chief, its current interim police chief, the Marion County Commission, the county sheriff and a former sheriff’s deputy.
According to an Associated Press article written by John Hanna from Feb. 11, 2024, Zorn’s lawsuit called them “co-conspirators” who deprived her of press and speech freedoms and the protection from unreasonable police searches guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Hanna’s article said he lawsuit alleges Cody was “infuriated” that the newspaper was investigating his background before he became Marion’s chief in May 2023. It also said Zorn was on Cody’s “enemies list.”
Zorn’s federal lawsuit is the second by a Marion County Record journalist over the assault.
Former Record reporter Deb Gruver sued Cody less than three weeks after the raid, seeking more than $75,000 in actual damages and more than $75,000 in punitive damages.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation took over the investigation of newspaper, but turned the case over to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
The Kansas Reflector reported that the KBI had been involved in investigating the journalists and knew police were planning to raid the newspaper office.
The CBI said it would look into the civil rights issues. Their findings have not been made public.
There are several other lawsuits pending, including a wrongful death suit. Eric Meyer’s 98-year-old mother died the day after the assault from cardiac arrest caused by the trauma of having the police search the home where she and Eric lived.
Marion County Record office manager Cheri Bentz field a separate lawsuit because the search and seizure.
According to Kansas Reflector in its April 1, 2024, edition, the Marion County Record has filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against local authorities who planned and carried out the raid last year of the newspaper office and publishers’ home, accusing the “co-conspirators” of seeking revenge for unfavorable news coverage through falsified and invalid search warrants.
According to a 127-page complaint, former Mayor David Mayfield ordered the takedown of the newspaper and a political rival after identifying journalists as “the real villains in America.”
The lawsuit claims defendants violated the First Amendment freedom of the press, the Fourth Amendment prohibition on warrantless searches, and federal and state laws that protect journalists — and their sources — from police raids.
Mayfield, former Marion police Chief Gideon Cody, acting police Chief Zach Hudlin, Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez and sheriff’s Detective Aaron Christner are defendants in the lawsuit, personally and in their official capacity.
The city council and county commission also are defendants.
John Mesh has worked in journalism for nearly 40 years in Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas. He currently freelance reports for The Hutchinson Tribune.
