#police raid small town newspaper

[comeonamericawakeup]

Local iournalism's "ever-deteriorating financial condition" has left small-town newspapers vulnerable to official intimidation, said Paul Farhi. When faced with potentially unflattering investigatory news stories, corrupt public officials often "bully the press because they believe they can get away with it." Too often, they do.

Their strong-arm tactics occasionally make national headlines, such as when the Marion, Kan., police chief ordered a raid of the newsroom of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher last August, which so upset the 98-year-old co-owner she died the next day. In another recent case, an Alabama county district attorney charged a reporter and the publisher of the Atmore News with violating a state secrecy law. Most of the roughly 1,000 reports of arrests, intimidation, and physical attacks on local journalists since 2017 have flown under the radar. Small-town weeklies struggling to survive are "easy prey for opportunistic or aggressive elected officials," because they don't "have pockets deep enough for a prolonged legal battle." This has a chilling effect on investigatory and watchdog journalism. "The true cost of media intimidation" often consists of "stories never pursued."

MARCH 22, 2024

[beardedmrbean]

MARION, Kan. (AP) — A small newspaper and a police department in Kansas are at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech that is being watched around the country after police raided the office of the local newspaper and the home of its owner and publisher.

Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones in the Friday raid, prompting press freedom watchdogs to condemn the actions of local authorities as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. The Marion County Record's editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, worked with his staff Sunday to reconstruct stories, ads and other materials for its next edition Wednesday.

A search warrant tied Friday morning raids, led by Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. She is accusing the newspaper of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record and suggested that the newspaper targeted her after she threw Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant during a political event.

While Meyer saw Newell's complaints — which he said were untrue — as prompting the raids, he also believes the newspaper's aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role. He said the newspaper was examining Cody's past work with the Kansas City, Missouri, police as well.

“This is the type of stuff that, you know, that Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do," Meyer said during an interview in his office. "This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”

Cody said Sunday that the raid was legal and tied to an investigation.

The raids occurred in a town of about 1,900 people, nestled among rolling prairie hills, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, making the small weekly newspaper the latest to find itself in the headlines and possibly targeted for its reporting.

Last year in New Hampshire, the publisher of a weekly newspaper accused the state attorney general’s office of government overreach after she was arrested for allegedly publishing advertisements for local races without properly marking them as political advertising. In Las Vegas, former Democratic elected official Robert Telles is scheduled to face trial in November for allegedly fatally stabbing Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German after German wrote articles critical of Telles and his managerial conduct.

Meyer said that on Friday, one Record reporter suffered an injury to a finger when Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report. The newspaper's surveillance video showed officers reading that reporter her rights while Cody watched, though she wasn't arrested or detained. Newspaper employees were hustled out of the building while the search continued for more than 90 minutes, according to the footage.

Meanwhile, Meyer said, police simultaneously raided his home, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router.

But as Meyer fielded messages from reporters and editors as far away as London and reviewed footage from the newsroom’s surveillance camera, Newell was receiving death threats from as far away, she said. She said the Record engages in “tabloid trash reporting” and was trying to hush her up.

“I fully believe that the intent was to do harm and merely tarnish my reputation, and I think if had it been left at that, I don’t think that it would have blown up as big as it was,” Newell said in a telephone interview.

Newell said she threw Meyer and the Record reporter out of the event for Republican U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner at the request of others who are upset with the “toxic” newspaper. On the town's main street, one storefront included a handmade “Support Marion PD” sign."

The police chief and other officials also attended and were acknowledged at the reception, and the Marion Police Department highlighted the event on its Facebook page.

LaTurner's office did not immediately return phone messages left Sunday at his Washington and district offices seeking comment.

Newell said she believes the newspaper violated the law to get her personal information as it checked on the status of her driver's license following a 2008 drunken driving conviction and other driving violations.

The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it verified through public online records. It eventually decided not to run a story because it wasn’t sure the source who supplied it had obtained it legally. But the newspaper did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell herself confirmed she'd had a DUI conviction and that she had continued to drive even after her license was suspended.

A two-page search warrant, signed by a local judge, lists Newell as the victim of alleged crimes by the newspaper. When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.

Cody, the police chief, indicated that probable cause affidavits were used to get the search warrants. When asked for a copy, Cody replied in an email late Sunday that the affidavits would be available “once charges are filed.”

Cody defended the raid, 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.”

Cody did not give details about what that alleged wrongdoing entailed.

Cody, who was hired in late April as Marion’s police chief after serving 24 years in the Kansas City police, did not respond to questions about how police believe Newell was victimized.

Press freedom and civil rights organizations said that police, the local prosecutor's office and the judge who signed off on the search warrant overstepped their authority.

“It seems like one of the most aggressive police raids of a news organization or entity in quite some time,” said Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, adding that it seemed “quite an alarming abuse of authority."

Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that the raid appeared to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, “and basic human decency.”

“The anti-press rhetoric that’s become so pervasive in this country has become more than just talk and is creating a dangerous environment for journalists trying to do their jobs," Stern said.

Meyer said he has been flooded with offers of help from press freedom groups and other news organizations. But he said what he and his staff need is more hours in the day to get their next edition put together.

Both he and Newell are contemplating lawsuits — Newell against the newspaper and Meyer against the public officials who staged the raid.

Meyer also blames the home raid for stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her death on Saturday. Joan Meyer was the newspaper's co-owner.

As for the criticism of the raid as a violation of First Amendment rights, Newell said her privacy rights were violated, and they are “just as important as anybody else’s.”

[mitchipedia]

Police in the small town of Marion, Kansas, raided the local newspaper office, leading to worldwide protest by free speech organizations. The newspaper publisher’s 98-year-old mother died the following day; the publisher says the raid triggered her death.

[clarafordahwin]

Why would the police chief conduct a raid on a newspaper's office, its reporters, and its publishers? Cody is very new to the job. He was only sworn in on May 31, 2023. Prior to that, Cody spent 24 years as a police officer in Kansas City, Missouri.

In an interview with Marisa Kabas, author of The Handbasket newsletter, Eric Meyer revealed that the Record "been investigating the police chief." According to Meyer, when Cody "was named Chief just two months ago, we got an outpouring of calls from his former co-workers making a wide array of allegations against him saying that he was about to be demoted at his previous job and that he retired to avoid demotion and punishment over sexual misconduct charges." Notably, "the allegations—including the identities of who made the allegations—were on one of the computers that got seized." Meyer said that one of his reporters had worked for "weeks" on the story. He emphasized that the Recrod is "not making any allegations against him, but we had investigated allegations."

Cody was personally involved in the raid. He allegedly "forcibly grabbed reporter Deb Gruver's personal cell phone from her hand, reinjuring one of her fingers, which had previously been dislocated.

Most major news outlets are covering this story, but haven't included this piece of information, likely due to its unofficial connection to the case. You can also read about it in an interview with Eric Meyer of the Marion County Record:

[meret118]

Before becoming police chief of Marion, Kansas, and leading a raid on the small town’s newspaper, Gideon Cody left the Kansas City Police Department under a cloud, facing possible discipline and demotion, police sources have told The Star.

Cody, who was a captain in police department’s property crimes unit, was under internal review for allegedly making insulting and sexist comments to a female officer.

. . .

Eric Meyer, the Record’s publisher and editor, said before the raid, his newspaper had been investigating Cody’s background and his time in Kansas City. Some of that information was on the servers seized by Cody’s officers and county sheriff’s deputies.

[socialjusticefail]

Ah good to know this Police Chief is suspended.

[carolyn-b]

[The Washington Post] How a small-town feud in Kansas sent a shock through American journalism

How a small-town feud in Kansas sent a shock through American journalism

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/08/26/marion-county-newspaper-police-raid-what-really-happened/

[wanderervenom]

From CNN: Items seized in a police raid at the Marion County Record newspaper in Kansas will be returned, officials say

Items seized in a police raid at the Marion County Record newspaper in Kansas will be returned, officials say

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Trump and 18 allies charged in Georgia election meddling (AP) Donald Trump and 18 allies were indicted in Georgia on Monday over their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, with prosecutors using a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in power. The nearly 100-page indictment details dozens of acts by Trump or his allies to undo his defeat, including beseeching Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to find enough votes for him to win the battleground state; harassing a state election worker who faced false claims of fraud; and attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of electoral college electors favorable to Trump. The indictment bookends a remarkable crush of criminal cases—four in five months, each in a different city.

Horrifying numbers of Americans will not make it to old age (Economist) Walk into the Rebound recovery centre, on the Main Street of Hazard, Kentucky, a small Appalachian coalmining town, and you will get an instantly friendly welcome. Yet the stories you hear are bleak. On a white board at the end of the room, the names of former clients who have died of overdoses in the past few years are listed. Though the town has a population of just 5,000, there are at least 20 names. James Colwell, a 33-year-old former heroin addict, who has been clean for eight years, and who now works at the centre, says that the toll keeps growing. Heroin addiction is actually less common than it used to be, he says, thanks in part to the proliferation of treatment. The problem is that “everyone is on meth. And they’re putting fentanyl in the pills.” In the past 20 years, on economic measures, America has outperformed other rich countries. Over that period, median wages grew by 25%, compared with just 17% in Germany. Managers at Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based chain of stores, can make more than experienced doctors earn in Britain. But on a more fundamental measure of wellness—how long people live—America is falling behind. In the past few years, according to some estimates, life expectancy in China overtook that in America. According to a study by Jessica Ho of the University of Southern California, published last year, which looked at 18 high-income countries, from a fairly average position in 1980, by 2018 America had fallen to dead last on life expectancy. What is killing Americans so much more? Ask almost any public-health expert, and they will point to the huge burden of poor health.

Kansas police raid small-town local newspaper, setting off a press freedoms clash (The Week) Police in Marion, Kansas, raided the weekly local newspaper, The Marion County Record, on August 11, seizing computers, files, and personal cellphones in connection with a dispute with a local restaurateur. The Marion police also raided the homes of City Council member Ruth Herbel and the Record's co-owners, editor and publisher Eric Meyer and his 98-year-old mother, Joan. Joan Meyer died Saturday, and her son said the police raid the previous day was partially responsible for her death. The raids set off a national uproar over press freedoms and roiled Marion, a town of 1,900 about 60 miles north of Wichita. Meyer said the Record was actively investigating the town’s police chief, Gideon Cody, over allegations from his long career with the Kansas City Police Department, but had not pinned down enough details to publish anything. Meyer said Cody did not know the Record's sources for the serious allegations against him before the raid—but he does now.

Ecuador was calm and peaceful. Now hitmen, kidnappers and robbers walk the streets (AP) Belen Diaz was walking home from college one evening when a motorcycle carrying two men made a menacing U-turn. Terrified that she was about to be robbed for the eighth time in three years, the teaching student banged on a cab window until the driver drove her home. Diaz got away safe, but there was an unrelated fatal shooting the next day outside her gated community of two-story homes on the edge of the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil. Ecuador was one of the calmest countries in Latin America until about three years ago. Today, criminals prowl relatively wealthy and working-class neighborhoods alike: professional hitmen, kidnappers, extortionists and thousands of thieves and robbers. Mexican and Colombian cartels have settled into coastal cities like Guayaquil and grabbed chunks of the trade shipping hundreds of millions of dollars of cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru to countries overseas.

Argentine outsider Javier Milei posts shock win in primary election (Reuters) Argentine voters punished the country’s two main political forces in a primary election on Sunday, pushing a rock-singing libertarian outsider candidate into first place in a huge shake-up in the race towards presidential elections in October. With some 90% of ballots counted, libertarian economist Javier Milei had 30.5% of the vote, far higher than predicted, with the main conservative opposition bloc behind on 28% and the ruling Peronist coalition in third place on 27%. The result is a stinging rebuke to the center-left Peronist coalition and the main Together for Change conservative opposition bloc with inflation at 116% and a cost-of-living crisis leaving four in 10 people in poverty.

Mudslide in the Italian Alps coats city streets in muck (AP) Rescue crews in an Italian Alpine city were searching Monday for missing people and clearing mud-caked roads after a mountain mudslide sent water and debris pouring into town, bursting riverbanks. Authorities said all residents were accounted for. The streets of Bardonecchia, a city near Turin in the Val di Susa mountain valley, were coated in thick gray mud following the violent mudslides late Sunday. Witness video showed a huge wave of dirt and debris toppling a gate and residents running away as the muck rushed down a city street; other videos showed thick mud coursing through the river banks that pass through town. Located at 1,300 meters (4,265 feet), Bardonecchia is a popular destination in the Italian Alps for both winter mountain sports and summer hiking, and several rivers, streams, creeks and tributaries feed into it.

Russia’s currency crisis (Foreign Policy) Russia’s Central Bank announced on Monday that it will convene an emergency meeting on Tuesday after the ruble fell to a 16-month low against the U.S. dollar—indicating that Western sanctions and international isolation over Russia’s war in Ukraine are taking a bite out of the country’s economy. According to new central bank data, the ruble is trading at a rate just above 101 to the U.S. dollar—a value loss of around 30 percent since the year began. This marks the Kremlin’s weakest currency level since Russia invaded Ukraine more than 18 months ago.

Russian warship fires warning shots at cargo ship in Black Sea (Reuters) A Russian warship on Sunday fired warning shots at a cargo ship in the southwestern Black Sea as it made its way northwards, the first time Russia has fired on merchant shipping beyond Ukraine since exiting a landmark UN-brokered grain deal last month. Firing on a merchant vessel will ratchet up already acute concerns among shipowners, insurers and commodity traders about the potential dangers of getting ensnared in the Black Sea—the main route that both Ukraine and Russia use to get their agricultural produce to market. Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s top agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets. Russia is also dominant in the fertiliser market. Since Russia left the Black Sea grain deal, both Moscow and Kyiv have issued warnings and carried out attacks that have sent jitters through global commodity, oil and shipping markets. Russia has said it will treat any ships approaching Ukrainian ports as potential military vessels, and their flag countries as combatants on the Ukrainian side.

To bury its dead, Ukraine is having to dig up victims of past wars (Economist) So many people have been killed in the war that in Lviv, in western Ukraine, the latest victims are displacing the dead from wars past. On August 4th, Vitaly Chekovsky’s family looked on sadly as he was buried with two comrades, in a military section of the city’s historic Lychakiv cemetery. The sandy earth where they buried him was soft and loose. Until only weeks ago his grave had been the resting place of someone else. At the Lychakiv cemetery, Mr Chekovksy was the 507th to be buried since the invasion began on February 24th, 2022. At first the dead were buried in another part of the cemetery, but space quickly ran out, so the cemetery turned instead to a grassy slope where a war memorial had been built in the 1970s, while Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. As the rows of graves marched up the hill, the gravediggers unexpectedly found skeletons from past wars. In 1915 the Russians, who were then in brief occupation of Lviv during the first world war, opened a cemetery nearby for Austro-Hungarian troops. Eventually more than 4,700 were buried there. In the interwar years, the Poles, now in control of the city, began exhuming them. In 1946 the Soviets, who had subsequently seized Lviv from the Poles, began razing the old Austro-Hungarian cemetery, and since then civilians have been buried there. On the other side of the Lychakiv cemetery lie Poles who died fighting the Ukrainians for control of Lviv in 1919-20, and after that the Red Army. A monument now looks down on the tombs of Ukrainians who fought the Russians after 2014, as well as those who died fighting the Soviets during and after the second world war.

Power cuts, heatwave disrupt lives of sick Gazans (Reuters) A heatwave and worsening power cuts in Gaza have left some of those living in the overcrowded Palestinian enclave struggling to breathe. Ismail Nashwan, who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis, has had to shuttle between his home and hospital since temperatures rose over 38 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), because he could not run his ventilator, or even just a fan, at home. “I go to the hospital, and when I come back home the electricity goes off again so I go back into the hospital,” Nashwan, 65, said through an oxygen mask, with dozens of bags of medicines on a table next to breathing equipment in his room. More than 2.3 million people live in a narrow strip of land squeezed between Egypt and Israel. Power cuts, which are unpredictable at the best of times, now last for around 12 hours a day instead of 10 as demand for air conditioning soars. The Islamist group Hamas, which has run the territory since 2007, blames a 16-year-long Israeli blockade—backed up by neighbouring Egypt—for devastating Gaza’s economy. Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop arms reaching Hamas.

High treason charge for former president of Niger (Foreign Policy) Niger’s military junta charged ousted President Mohamed Bazoum with high treason on Sunday for trying to derail peace negotiation efforts through his exchanges with foreign leaders and international organizations. He was also charged with threatening the country’s internal and external security. If found guilty, Bazoum could face the death penalty. Since the West African nation’s coup on July 26, Bazoum and his family have been held captive in the presidential palace, where reports indicate he is running out of food and living without electricity, water, or medical attention.

South Africa’s unemployment (AP) Lebohang Mphuthi works amid the chaos of boisterous children during a lunch break at the Omar H.S. Ebrahim elementary school in South Africa. Four years after graduating with a degree in analytical chemistry, the only work the 26-year-old has found is as a student assistant at a public school in Pretoria. Her responsibilities include handing out meals to the children and limiting the chaos as best she can. Mphuthi’s story mirrors those of so many young South African graduates sitting at home jobless or trying to make ends meet doing fairly menial jobs in a country with a 33% official unemployment rate. It’s a figure badly at odds with the status of a nation meant to embody the aspirations of Africa and the developing world. In a South African context, Mphuthi might be considered lucky with the $215 she earns a month. South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world, according to the World Bank, outstripping Gaza and the West Bank, Djibouti and Kosovo. When it comes to youth unemployment, the rate is 61% of 15- to 24-year-olds, according to official statistics, and a staggering 71% if you again count those who are no longer trying.

[socialjusticefail]

The ex-police chief is paying up.

[swldx]

BBC 0431 14 Aug 2023

12095Khz 0357 14 AUG 2023 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 55445. English, dead carrier s/on @0357z then ID@0359z pips and newsday preview. @0401z World News anchored by Eileen McCue. Niger's coup leaders that toppled President Mohamed Bazoum said late Sunday they would "prosecute" him for "high treason" and "undermining the security" of the country in a statement read on national television. Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso announced Thursday that a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) team will assist in the investigation into the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. The mission of the U.S. agents will be to aid the Ecuadorian authorities in determining the motive for the crime and identifying the perpetrators. Lahaina, once Hawaii's royal capital, is now a crematorium. Close to 100 deaths have been confirmed, making the Lahaina wildfires the deadliest in the US in more than a century. But just 3% of Lahaina's charred ruins have been searched so far, stoking fears that the death toll will continue its sharp climb. Ten years ago, hundreds of people, mostly civilians, were killed when Egyptian forces violently dispersed a sit-in protest by supporters of the recently ousted Islamist president. The crackdown on followers of Mohammed Morsi was one of the bloodiest incidents of its kind, and one of Egypt's darkest moments. Memories of that day are still raw. Taiwan will not be afraid nor back down in the face of authoritarian threats, the island's vice president told supporters on a U.S. visit that Beijing has condemned, while reiterating a willingness to talk to China. William Lai, also frontrunner to be Taiwan's next president at January elections, is in the United States on what is officially a transit stop on his way to Paraguay for the inauguration of its new president. Paraguay is one of only 13 countries to maintain formal ties with the Chinese-claimed island. China’s property crisis worsened as state-backed developer Sino-Ocean Group Holdings missed interest payments and shares in developer Country Garden slumped further after it suspended trading of some onshore bonds on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Argentine voters punished the country's two main political forces in a primary election on Sunday, pushing a rock-singing libertarian outsider candidate into first place in a huge shake-up in the race towards presidential elections in October. A small-town Kansas newspaper said its 98-year-old co-owner died Saturday after local police raided her home, seized her computer and other equipment, and separately grabbed phones, computers and other material from the paper’s staff. National press organizations have condemned the raids on the offices, staff and owners of the Marion County Record, a 154-year-old weekly paper serving Marion, Kan. and its namesake county, home to 12,000 people. @0406z "Newsday" begins. 250ft unterminated BoG antenna pointed E/W, Etón e1XM. 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63°. Received at Plymouth, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2257.

[maryturck]

Gestapo Tactics in the Heartland

I grew up in a rural community, living on a farm near a small town. I know that small towns can be havens of neighborly ties and community support. They can also turn into police states under the corrupt reign of lawless officials. Sometimes that leads to tragedy, as it did this week in Marion, Kansas.  I read about the police raid on newspaper editors, publishers, and reporters last night, and…