In an August editorial, I warned our readers that the 1,902-person Kansas prairie town of Marion was the epicenter of a new assault on our constitutional protections and civil liberties after an undemocratic power grab demonstrating both political and professional stupidity.
On Aug. 11, Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody and his five-officer police force raided the Marion County Record newsroom and the home of Editor Eric Meyer, seizing computers and cell phones belonging to Meyer and his reporters. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, who was the co-owner of the paper, later died from the stress.
Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn had earlier been kicked out of a meeting with the area’s member of Congress by a restaurant owner, Kari Newell, who was angry that the paper had reported that she had stated at a public meeting that she had a DUI but was still driving around town.
Cody got the warrant for the raid to determine where the paper got the information — ignoring that it had come from Newell’s mouth at a public meeting.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation immediately began an investigation of Cody’s clearly illegal actions. Cody had obtained a search warrant from a friendly judge, but that is not sufficient to seize materials from journalists.
Newspapers, media outlets and journalists gathering material for use in possible stories are explicitly protected by the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980. The federal law came about after police raided the newsroom of The Stanford Daily student newspaper at Stanford University looking for photos from a 1971 protest that police had violently broken up.
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When the courts ruled against the student newspaper in 1978, Congress quickly passed the federal law to protect journalists who may be investigating police brutality, police corruption or unlawful acts committed by uniformed officers or their superiors under the color of law from intimidation by those same agencies. The law thus mandates that prosecutors or law enforcement need a court to issue a subpoena for a journalist’s records if they suspect illegal activity — a simple warrant isn’t enough.
Cody ignored the federal law in his unlawful search.
The Marion County Record refused to back down, printing the next edition with the headline “SEIZED … but not silenced; KBI takes over” above a security camera photo of the police in the newsroom stealing journalists’ computers.
Newspapers and media outlets worldwide rose to defend the small paper with news stories, editorials, op-eds and think pieces. The Kansas Press Association began selling merchandise with the front page image to raise funds for paper’s legal fight.
The paper, which had been investigating Cody’s 24 years with the police department in Kansas City, Mo., prior to his being hired by Marion in April, stepped up their reporting as former coworkers and subordinate officers began telling the newspaper about Cody’s bad behavior, which had led to his demotion before he fled to Marion to be its chief — at a significant pay cut.
The public reaction against Cody was overwhelming. Even Newell, who had arguably begun the whole debacle, turned on Cody, calling for his resignation and revealing to another news outlet that Cody had asked her to delete text messages between them.
Yet Marion Mayor David Mayfield and the Marion City Council refused to suspend or fire Cody, leading to repeated 3-2 council votes against taking any action, purportedly to wait until the KBI investigation concluded.
That changed on Friday, Sept. 29, when Mayfield suspended Cody. On Monday, Oct. 2, Cody resigned, effective immediately. Patrol officer Zach Hudlin was appointed as interim chief. That was an easy choice — Hudlin is the only officer left. The other four officers quit in the weeks after the raid.
“Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton,” the adage goes — Cody may have temporarily taken away the paper’s computers, but the paper permanently took away his job. Cody’s troubles aren’t over, either, because the KBI investigation is still ongoing.
The raid highlighted the dangers newspapers face beyond a changing financial environment, consolidation by national chains, shrinking local staff and increasing “news deserts.”
The National Newspaper Association, representing newspapers in 31 states, issued a new resolution in support of local journalism and urged Congress to take action to protect both newspapers and journalists, with Chairman John Galer, publisher of the Journal-News in Hillsboro, Ill., concluding, “It is time for us to speak up with our loudest voices: Community newspaper journalism is the glue that holds local democracies together.”
We wholeheartedly agree.
If you’re reading this, you do too.
National Newspaper Association Resolution:
