Kansas police raid newspaper's office, publisher's home to seize records; reporter injured
FOX NewsAPR 2023
The police raid of the Marion County Record is about way more than a small-town newspaper in Middle America. It's about police overreach and the First Amendment. Police used brutal authoritarian tactics to raid and destroy everything the newspaper had, to the point of scaring a 98-year-old woman to her death. America's First Amendment Rights are under attack, and the police's brutal sacking of the Record is a sobering reminder of the threat to democracy.
While some activists and journalists are trying to spin the police raid of the Marion County Record as a fascist attack on the freedom of the press, the evidence mainly points to it being a petty dispute between a local resident and the paper. Kari Newell was upset that the Record had access to her driving-while-intoxicated report and told the police that the paper obtained it illegally. The police then got a warrant and investigated the situation. The authorities may have gotten too aggressive, but let's not compare this situation to the stuff of authoritarian regimes.