Newspaper raid kills owner

Source: ‘Stressed beyond her limits’: co-owner of Kansas newspaper dies after police raid | Kansas | The Guardian

The co-owner of a small Kansas newspaper whose offices and staff were raided by local police officers conducting a leak investigation has died after the situation left her “stressed beyond her limits”, according to the publication.

Joan Meyer, 98, collapsed on Saturday afternoon and died at her home a day after she tearfully watched officers who showed up at her home with a search warrant cart away her computer as well as an internet router, reported the Marion County Record, which she co-owned. After officers also photographed the bank statements of her son, Record publisher Eric Meyer, and left her house in mess, Meyer had been unable to eat or sleep, her newspaper said.
. . .
Attempts to contact both Marion’s police chief – Gideon Cody – and the judge who authorized his agency to conduct the raids aimed at the Record, Laura Viar, for comment on Meyer’s sudden death were not immediately successful.

As the Record has told it, the weekly’s ordeal began when a confidential source leaked evidence that a local restaurant proprietor, Kari Newell, had been convicted of drunk-driving but continued using her car without a license.
. . .
According to reporting from the Kansas Reflector, Newell had admitted to the drunk-driving arrest as well as driving with a suspended license. Yet she insinuated that the leak was meant to jeopardize her license to serve alcohol and harm her business.

But, as the Reflector reported, Newell’s comments during the council meeting were untrue, and she had police remove reporters for the Record from an open forum held by US congressman Jake LaTurner at a coffee shop which she operates. (LaTurner’s staff had invited the news media and apologized.)
. . .
The Reflector added that the warrant signed by Viar “appears to violate a federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists”. The law requires authorities to instead subpoena materials, the circumvention of which by the police prompted Eric Meyer to liken the raids his newspaper endured to those conducted by repressive government regimes.​

This is so sad and why "fake news" slanders are so dangerous. Especially if someone is willing to use police powers to enforce their criticism of a news organization.

Bob Wilson

 

I don't know but I suspect we'll learn from follow-up news.

Bob Wilson