A small central Kansas police department is facing a firestorm of criticism after it raided the offices of a local newspaper and the home of its publisher and owner - a move deemed by several press freedom watchdogs as a blatant violation of the U.S...
The Marion County Record said in its own published reports that police raided the newspaper’s office on Friday, seizing the newspaper’s computers, phones and file server and the personal cellphones of staff, based on a search warrant. One Record reporter said one of her fingers was injured when Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report.
The next week at a city council meeting, Newell publicly accused the newspaper of using illegal means to get information on a drunk driving conviction against her. The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it sought to verify through public online records. It eventually decided not to run a story on Newell’s DUI, but it did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell confirmed the 2008 DUI conviction herself.
Cody, the police chief, defended the raid on Sunday, saying in an email to The Associated Press that while federal law usually requires a subpoena - not just a search warrant - to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.
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