The High Cost of Interfering with a Free Press

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In a posting in this space three days ago entitled "First Amendment Under Siege in Marion, Kansas," I recounted some history from Phoenix, Arizona, in which uniformed goons working for Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County had raided the homes of the two owners of a local newspaper in the middle of the night and arrested those individuals.  The bit of bravado on Old Joe's part wound up costing the taxpayers of his county a cool 3.75 million dollars.

The main thrust of that blog posting dealt with a similar incident that had just occurred in the city and county of Marion, Kansas, in which five city police, including the chief of police, and two county deputies had raided the offices of the local newspaper, "The Marion County Record," as well as the publisher's home, and seized records, computers, and even cellphones.  That raid happened last week and quickly resulted in a national outcry regarding the historic right of freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  Threats of lawsuits began flying immediately.

In the intervening days a couple of newsworthy things have happened int the Kansas case.  The county prosecutor has withdrawn the search warrants used in the raids stating that there had been insufficient evidence for the original issuance of the warrants.    The local prosecutor has stated that all seized equipment must be returned to the newspaper and its four-person staff.  The equipment was subsequently released by the local police who attested that they had not accessed any of it, but, at the request of the newspaper's lawyer, it was all turned over to a computer forensics expert in Kansas City who will examine the equipment to see if the newspaper's records were accessed while the equipment was in the custody of the police.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation which is under the control of state attorney general Kris Kobach, a national conservative icon, has said that it will continue to pursue its investigation of the newspaper's activities, apparently regardless of the local prosecutor's new position on the matter.

Also connected to the case appears to be the fact that the newspaper publisher's 98-year-old mother died the day after the raids which included the home that she shared with her son, the publisher.  The mother and her husband had purchased the newspaper twenty-five years earlier to keep it from being gobbled up  by a national chain, and she was still a co-owner of the newspaper at the time of her death. After the raid on her home, the lady had called the action of the police "Hitler tactics."  Her son, the publisher, is expressing the view that his mother's death was brought on by the trauma of the police raiding their home.

Staff worked through the night this past Tuesday to recreate stories and ads that had been stored in the seized equipment, and the weekly newspaper came out late on Wednesday with a 5-inch tall headline that read "Seized But Not Silenced!"  One unexpected benefit that the "Marion County Record" has apparently reaped from all of this unexpected and unwanted notoriety is that it has seen a sudden increase in subscriptions from across the nation.  An employee for the paper said that she was having trouble keeping up with the new subscription activity.

Clouds and silver linings, one must suppose.

One must also suppose that the damages eventually awarded over this police fiasco in Kansas will be substantial, especially when a collateral death is added to the mix of allegations.  Flaunting the First Amendment comes with a cost,  just ask the taxpayers in Maricopa County, Arizona.