1st amendment under attack in Kansas
Police stormed into a small local newspaper's office and the paper's owners-editor's house to seize computers, servers, phones, papers, and other records earlier this month. Local law enforcement officers, carrying a warrant they claimed justified the action, crashed through the sites, leaving chaos, messy destruction, and reportedly even a related death as relics of the raids on the newspaper spaces.
On hearing the news, the images that came to mind put me back abroad where I had observed and reported on such scenes. I remembered the shock of seeing raided news offices in one dictatorship when martial-law was imposed on that nation. Now I assumed this was news of an event in a far-flung country, where such actions might not be a surprise, where the U.S. preaches freedom of the press.
But, no, I was wrong. This happened Aug. 11 in the United States of America.
Local law enforcement officers in Marion, Kansas, raided the county's newspaper office and editor's house where he lived with his 98-year-old mother, a co-owner of the paper. Tragically, she died the next day. That night, Saturday, Aug. 12, the Marion County Record, a weekly, published online updates headlined “Illegal raids contribute to death of newspaper co-owner” fully reporting on the combined raids.
This kind of police raid on a news organization in many foreign countries usually triggers a flurry of international condemnation. Western governments, boasting democratic values, and international press freedom organizations issue press releases with statements denouncing “the non-democratic” action against the local news organizations.
Instead, to the surprise of many worldwide, this action took place in the USA. Marion County officials behind the warrant and the raid defended their actions, saying they were justified in seeking names of secret sources behind news stories.
Press statements from state, national and international press organizations denouncing the American Kansas raids followed immediately.
“This raid appears to have been a massive abuse of power by local authorities to shutter a local newspaper they didn't like,” said Clayton Weimers, director of the global Reporters Sans Frontieres' (Reporters Without Borders) RSF-USA bureau. “Law enforcement cannot simply raid media organizations at will.”
Yet, as one who once worked as an executive editor of weekly American newspapers, I have not been surprised at learning that many local people in Marion, Kansas, are now afraid publicly to speak out in support of their newspaper. Those who acknowledge this — anonymously — admit that they fear the local authorities in their home town and county.
The ideal value placed on the U.S. First Amendment “freedom of the press” is so basic in American democracy that often people don't recognize the constant threats especially at the local level. To my own surprise when I went from working as an international and national journalist to working in local journalism, I came to the realization then, more than three decades ago, that local reporting could pose more dangers and also difficulties in covering and getting the news than at global levels.
Like the people today in Marion, Kansas, many people in the U.S. and elsewhere do not want to upset local authorities, government officials and elected office-holders, living right in their same town and county. The journalists live there, too. They are all neighbors.
Working on local newspapers in Northern Virginia, I learned, for example, that getting information and comments from local officials often was much more difficult than getting statements from high level U.S. or even world officials. I also found that the actions by some local powerholders trying to prevent our publishing stories were more directly threatening to us than at national or international levels.
Local journalism everywhere is dangerous. As an example, at a Leadership Asheville Forum program on local journalism earlier this year, local news leaders in Western North Carolina acknowledged that today they and their staffs face verbal attacks, threats of physical violence, even death threats.
Our First Amendment Freedom of the Press needs cherished guarding. The Kansas situation is a reminder that threats to press freedom exist in the U.S. just as elsewhere worldwide. What happened at the Marion County Record can happen anywhere.
Elizabeth (Liz) Colton, Ph.D., award winning journalist in all the news media, including News & Documentary Emmy Award with ABCNews, now a UNITAR professor of diplomacy & the media, also Diplomat & Journalist in Residence at Warren Wilson College, and board-chair of Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) RSF-USA/North America bureau.