Democracy Dies in a Raid?
How a small-town newspaper lost its rights, and its matriarch.
Most Americans would have gone their whole lives without knowing about the Marion County Record. The weekly newspaper serves the small county (population roughly 11,700) about 50 miles north of Wichita. A throwback to traditional hyper-local newspapers, the Record publishes regional news as well as a home and garden section, death notices and a list of upcoming events around the county.
The Record was thrown into the national spotlight on August 11, when local police raided the newspaper offices and the home of the paper’s 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer, who died the next day. The raid was said to be conducted because a reporter for the paper might have illegally pulled records on a restaurant owner who had been convicted of drunk driving in 2008. "Downloading the document involved either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought,” Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrote in an affidavit.
A recent front page of the Marion County Record focuses heavily on the raids and Meyer’s death
The reporter, Phyllis Zorn, says she used public records to find the information. The paper received a tip that Kari Newell, the owner of the restaurant Chef’s Plate at Parlour 1886 in downtown Marion, had a DUI on her record, which might prevent her from obtaining a liquor license for her establishment. Newell was already not a fan of the Record, noting that the paper “has a long-standing reputation for twisting and contorting comments within our community.”
At a city council meeting on August 7, Newell said that a reporter’s (she didn’t directly mention Zorn) search for her information “was negligent, reckless and unnecessary, and it was a violation of my personal privacy and information.” Meyer was also at the meeting and insisted that the reporter had conducted herself ethically throughout the investigation.
Even so, police showed up at the Record offices a few days later with a search warrant and seized computers and other electronics. At Meyer’s house, police calmly looked for computers as a furious Meyer paced through her living room using her walker. “Get out of my house!” she yelled at one officer, who she later called an “a**hole.”
“Get out and stand outside," she told an officer, who responded that the police had a right to be there. "You stand outside that door. I don’t want you in my house,” she bellowed.”
Meyer’s son, Eric, with whom she lived, said later that the raid caused a great deal of stress for the nonagenarian. She asked her son, “Where are all the good people who are supposed to stop this from happening?” In an interview with the Wichita Eagle shortly after the raid, she said, “These are Hitler tactics, and something has to be done.” She wouldn’t live to see that happen.
The next afternoon, Joan Meyer told her son she wasn’t feeling well enough to eat and, he says, died “right in the middle of the sentence.”
In true Midwestern, small-town fashion, Eric Meyer spoke about the raid and his mother’s death with controlled frustration. “I am perturbed — I carefully chose that word — as all get out about them raiding our office,” he said in an interview. “But what bothers me most is a 98-year-old woman spent her last day on earth . . . feeling under attack by bullies who invaded her house.”
Photo from Daily Mail
The “bullies” included Chief of Police Cody, who earlier in 2023 left the Kansas City Police Department after 24 years because he was facing demotion for alleged sexist remarks to a female officer, and Judge Laura Viar, who approved the raids and who was arrested twice for DUIs in Kansas in 2012.
A few days after the raids, Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey declared that police had insufficient evidence and withdrew the search warrant. All electronics were returned to the newspaper offices and the Meyer home. But the controversy continues. The Record’s attorney, Bernie Rhodes, argues that Cody was at the center of the raids and acted dishonestly and possibly illegally. "This was his (Cody’s) affidavit. His investigation and his search," Rhodes said. "He drove to the house to personally search the house of a 98-year-old who had nothing to do with this. A woman who died the next day."
The small-town story drew the attention of news organizations around the country, and with good reason. The thought that a newspaper could seemingly follow the rules of journalism and still face a police raid sends chills up the spines of writers, editors and publishers. The investigation into this situation will slowly unfold, and it will be something that every journalist will want to follow.
Photo from Wichita Eagle
Joan Meyer, who spent her whole life in Marion and never went to college but with her late husband built a respected career with the local paper, was remembered for her tenacity and her good-natured attitude toward life. “Joan was the epitome of knowing ‘small town’ does not have to mean ‘small mind,’ ” the reverend of the Methodist church she attended said during her funeral. “She knew everybody in the community of the county.”
She also believed in unbiased journalism. “That’s what Joan said newspapers should do, is not tell you what to think but give you the grist for the mill and urge you to think, to consume,” the reverend noted.
Her son, Eric, who also works for the Record, was realistic about how much longer his mother might have lived, although the circumstances around her death make him angry. Even amid the ordeal, though, Eric found a silver lining. “Her death had meaning,” he told a reporter. “Her life had meaning. She was worried before that her life hadn’t had meaning, and I think now it comes back that her life did have meaning.”
One more thing, it now seems that not only was the restaurant owner the target of the leak the newspaper received (she had a DUI and had been driving for 13 years without re-establishing her license, so it was illegal for her to drive when she applied for the liquor license for her restaurant), the police chief who came to the town after being run out of Kansas City after some inappropriate communication with staff also had DUI problems. As someone who lived in a small town where getting a policeman who had any decent knowledge of the law is very difficult, they no doubt thought getting this guy from KC was good. My friend is familiar with this part of Kansas, and it's really out in the sticks. The towns that are considered big cities in that area would be like Sandusky here.
The family of Mrs. Meyer has released the home security video of the warrant search of her home. She was a feisty lady! So sad her last hours were spent in such anguish over something she knew was wrong. I read that she was not college educated, she just knew how important it was to have press freedom, especially in a smaller town (something we have all dearly lost if you are served by a Gannett/USA Network newspaper).