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marion county record
Kansas Editor Hopes $3 Million Payout for Police Raids Stops Future Attacks on Press
"In our democracy, the press is a watchdog against abuse," said Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer. "If the watchdog itself is the target of abuse, and all it does is roll over, democracy suffers.”
Nov 11, 2025
A Kansas county has agreed to pay $3 million over 2023 police raids of a local newspaper and multiple homes—one of which belonged to its elderly publisher, whose death shortly followed—sparking nationwide alarm over increasing attacks on the free press.
Marion County agreed to pay the seven-figure settlement and issue a formal apology to the publishers of the Marion County Record admitting that wrongdoing had occurred during the August 11, 2023 raids on the paper's newsroom and two homes.
The apology states that the Marion County Sheriff's Office "wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record. This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrant."
Bernie Rhodes, an attorney for the Record, told the paper, "This is a first step—but a big step—in making sure that Joan Meyer’s death served a purpose, in making sure that the next crazed cop who thinks they can raid a newsroom understands the consequences are measured in millions of dollars."
Rhodes was referring to the 98-year-old Record co-owner, who was reportedly in good health for her age, but collapsed and died at her home in the immediate aftermath of the raid by Marion police and country sheriff's deputies.
"This is a first step—but a big step—in making sure that Joan Meyer’s death served a purpose."
Eric Meyer, Joan Meyer's son and the current publisher of the Record, said: “The admission of wrongdoing is the most important part. In our democracy, the press is a watchdog against abuse. If the watchdog itself is the target of abuse, and all it does is roll over, democracy suffers.”
According to the Record, awards include:
- $200,000 to Eric Meyer, whose home was raided and two computers and a cellphone seized;
- $250,000 to reporter Deb Gruver, whose cell phone was seized;
- $300,000 to the Record;
- $600,000 to reporter Phyllis Zorn, whose cell phone was seized;
- $650,000 to former vice mayor Ruth Herbel, whose computer and cell phone were seized, and her husband, Ron, whose dementia was aggravated by the raid on their home; and
- $1 million to the estate of Joan Meyer.
Record business manager Cheri Bentz—who suffered aggravation of health conditions following one of the raids—previously settled with the county for $50,000.
Katherine Jacobsen, the US, Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, hailed the settlement as "an important win for press freedom amid a growing trend of hostility toward those who hold power to account."
"Journalists must be able to work freely and without fear of having their homes raided and equipment seized due to the overreach of authorities," she added.
The raids—during which police seized the Record‘s electronic equipment, work product, and documentary materials—were conducted with search warrants related to an alleged identity theft investigation.
However, critics—who have called the warrants falsified and invalid—noted that the raids came as the Record investigated sexual misconduct allegations against then-Marion Police Chief Police Gideon Cody. The raids, they say, were motivated by Cody's desire to silence the paper's unfavorable reporting about him.
State District Judge Ryan Rosauer ruled last month that Cody likely committed a felony crime when he instructed a witness with whom he allegedly had an improper romantic relationship to delete text messages they exchanged before, during, and after the raids.
While Cody will not be tried in connection with Meyer's death or the 2023 raids, Rosauer ordered him to stand trial over the deleted texts.
Meyer at the time expressed dismay that Cody wasn't being tried for his mother's death or the raids. He also worried that Cody was being made a scapegoat, as other people and law enforcement agencies were involved in the incident.
Following the announcement of the settlement, Meyer said that "this never has been about money, the key issue always has been that no one is above the law."
"No one can trample on the First and Fourth Amendments for personal or political purposes and get away with it," he continued. "When my mother warned officers that the stress they were putting her under might lead to her death, she called what they were doing Hitler tactics."
"What keeps our democracy from descending as Germany did before World War II is the courage she demonstrated—and we’ve tried to continue—in fighting back," Meyer added.
"This never has been about money, the key issue always has been that no one is above the law."
Five consolidated federal civil rights lawsuits have been filed in the US District Court for the District of Kansas, alleging wrongful death, unlawful searches, retaliation for protected speech, and other claims tied to the raids.
“It’s a shame additional criminal charges aren’t possible,” Meyer said, “but the federal civil cases will do everything they can to discourage future abuses of power.”
Although unable to savor the Record's victory, Joan Meyer presciently told the officers raiding her home, "Boy, are you going to be in trouble."
“She was so right," said Rhodes.
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'First Step Toward Accountability': Prosecutor Withdraws Search Warrant Against Kansas Newspaper
"The Record should sue not only to deter future searches of its newsroom, but to protect journalists and news outlets around the country from future illegal raids," said one press freedom advocate.
Aug 16, 2023
The local prosecutor behind last week's police raid on a Kansas newspaper and its co-owners' home—which has been widely decried by media outlets and press freedom advocates—agreed on Wednesday to withdraw the related search warrant and return seized items including computers and cellphones to the Marion County Record.
"On Monday, August 14, 2023, I reviewed in detail the warrant applications made Friday, August 11, 2023 to search various locations in Marion County including the office of the Marion County Record," said Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey in a statement. "The affidavits, which I am asking the court to release, established probable cause to believe that an employee of the newspaper may have committed the crime of K.S.A. 21-5839, Unlawful Acts Concerning Computers."
"Upon further review however, I have come to the conclusion that insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized," he continued. "As a result, I have submitted a proposed order asking the court to release the evidence seized. I have asked local law enforcement to return the material seized to the owners of the property."
Ensey noted that "this matter will remain under review" until the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which is now responsible for the probe, may submit findings to his office for a charging decision. The KBI Wednesday said that "this investigation remains open" and "will proceed independently, and without review or examination of any of the evidence seized on Friday."
KSHB 41 reported that the Record's lawyer, Bernie Rhodes, "says all items that were seized as part of the raid have been released back to the attorney representing the newspaper," and "a forensics expert is on standby to examine the items that were seized."
Rhodes told The Washington Post that the withdrawal of the warrant was "a promising first step" but "it doesn't do anything to undo the past and regrettably, it doesn't bring back Joan Meyer," who lived with her son, Eric Meyer, the Record's co-owner and publisher.
According to the targeted newspaper, "Stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal police raids on her home and the Marion County Record newspaper office Friday, 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer, otherwise in good health for her age, collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home."
Echoing Rhodes, PEN America's Shannon Jankowski said in a statement Wednesday that "the withdrawal of a search warrant against the Marion County Record and the return of seized devices after a raid by law enforcement is a first step toward accountability in this unconscionable breach of press freedom."
"While withdrawing the search warrant is the correct step, Marion County tragically cannot undo the death of the newspaper's 98-year-old co-owner Joan Meyer, who collapsed and died after police rifled through papers and seized materials from her home," she stressed. "Nor can law enforcement reverse the damage that has resulted to the newspaper staff, its confidential sources, and the chill on press freedom writ large from the raid. PEN America continues to stand in solidarity with the Record and urges that those responsible for the raid be held to account for violating the newspaper's rights."
Leaders at the Freedom of the Press Foundation similarly called for accountability on Wednesday, with deputy director of advocacy Caitlin Vogus saying that "the Record and the public deserve to know why the Marion police decided to conduct this raid and whether they gave even a moment's thought to the First Amendment or other legal restrictions before they decided to search a newsroom."
"Government officials who think they can raid a newsroom should be on notice that there are consequences for searches that violate the law," Vogus continued, noting that the newspaper has threatened a lawsuit. "The Record should sue not only to deter future searches of its newsroom, but to protect journalists and news outlets around the country from future illegal raids."
In this case, Freedom of the Press Foundation director of advocacy Seth Stern argued, "authorities deserve zero credit for coming to their senses only after an intense backlash from the local and national media and an aggressive letter from the Record's lawyer."
"These kinds of frivolous abuses of the legal system to attack the press are intended not to win but to intimidate journalists," he said. "Usually, after accomplishing that goal, authorities are able to drop charges quietly to avoid embarrassing themselves in court. It's good that this time the process is playing out publicly, thanks to the media attention this case rightfully received."
Despite several obstacles created by local law enforcement seizing electronics and reporting materials, the Record published on Wednesday—with a front-page headline that declared, "SEIZED... but not silenced."
"Phyllis Zorn, a staff reporter, said she had heard of the term 'all-nighter,' but she didn't know it to be real before," the Kansas Reflector reported, noting that newspaper staff finished the pages of Wednesday's edition just after 5:00 am and Eric Meyer made it home at 7:30 am.
The publisher told the Reflector that "if we hadn't been able to figure out how to get computers together, Phyllis and I and everybody else would be handwriting notes out on Post-It notes and putting them on doors around the town, because we were going to publish one way or another."
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The Raid on the Marion County Record Was an Attack on the Free Press
The case is a reminder that the United States is no stranger to local powers using their authority to silence what is left of critical journalism.
Aug 16, 2023
As the police raided Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer’s home August 11 (Committee to Protect Journalists, 8/12/23; AP, 8/13/23; New York Times, 8/13/23), his 98-year-old mother was aghast, watching the cops rummage through her things. “She was very upset, yelling about ‘Gestapo tactics’ and ‘where are all the good people?’” Meyer told FAIR. He said that after the raid she “was beside herself, she wouldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, and finally went to bed about sunrise.” Meyer’s mother, a co-owner of the paper, eventually told her son that the whole affair was “going to be the death of me.”
And it was. She died the next afternoon. And Meyer blames the police (Daily Beast, 8/12/23).
By that afternoon, Meyer had been fielding calls all day with lawyers and journalists, as the raid on the paper’s offices and his home suddenly made his small-town Kansas paper world-famous. He spoke to FAIR from his office line, because his cellphone had been seized, along with other equipment.
Meyer explained that current town police chief Gideon Cody—a retiree of the Kansas City, Missouri, police department—has harbored animosity toward the paper ever since it started asking uncomfortable questions about his hiring.
The raid was “authorized by a search warrant that alleged identity theft and unlawful use of a computer,” The Guardian (8/12/23) reported, leading authorities to take “publishing and reporting materials that the newspaper relied on to publish their next edition.”
The reason, according to news reports, seems fairly petty, sparked by the complaints of local restaurateur Kari Newell, who had demanded that Meyer and a reporter be removed from an event with area Congressmember Jake LaTurner (R-Kan.). She alleged later that the paper had unlawfully obtained personal records showing that she, according to The Guardian, had allegedly been “convicted of drink-driving and continued using her vehicle without a license,” but that “the paper never published anything related to it.”
But that’s not what Meyer thinks this is really about. Meyer explained that current town police chief Gideon Cody—a retiree of the Kansas City, Missouri, police department—has harbored animosity toward the paper ever since it started asking uncomfortable questions about his hiring (Handbasket, 8/12/23; Washington Post, 8/13/23). Meyer’s paper, after hearing anonymous allegations about his tenure, questioned town leaders as to whether they vetted Cody before hiring him (the paper never published any of the allegations, Meyer said). This led to a confrontation between the paper and the chief, and Meyer believes that the restaurateur’s antics were merely an excuse to exert power over the paper.
Silencing Critical Journalism
When an anti-corruption newspaper in Guatemala gets shut down and its publisher is thrown in jail (Washington Post, 5/15/23), or a Hong Kong publisher known for opposing the expanding powers of police is imprisoned (AP, 10/25/22), Americans might be outraged but figure that these are the tribulations of less open and democratic societies. The Marion County Record case is a reminder that the United States is no stranger to local powers using their authority to silence what is left of critical journalism.
Consider how officials in Delaware County in the Catskills region of New York reacted to the critical reporting of a local paper, the Reporter. “The county stripped the newspaper of a lucrative contract to print public notices,” The New York Times (6/18/23) reported, noting that the county admitted to the Reporter that the “decision was partly based on ‘the manner in which your paper reports county business.’” This hit the paper where it hurts, as the “move cost the Reporter about $13,000 a year in revenue.” This kind of retaliation has occurred in several states, the Times said.
Missouri has seen several attempts to intimidate or impede journalists. In St. Louis, a judge forbade “the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from publishing material from the mental health evaluation of a man accused of killing a police officer” (Riverfront Times, 5/25/23), an apparently unconstitutional prior restraint on the press. Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt, now a Republican senator, “filed a request in June [2022] asking for three years of emails sent and received by… professors while they worked at the Columbia Missourian” (AP, 9/2/22), a clear intimidation tactic towards journalists whose publications are attached to public universities. The state’s governor also pursued a criminal investigation into a Post-Dispatch reporter who found security breaches on a government website, although no charges were ultimately filed (USA Today, 2/12/22).
Officials rationalize many of these actions against news outlets by the fact that journalists received information or witnessed something they weren’t supposed to. But that is, in fact, what journalism is.
The city of Los Angeles sued both a Knock LA reporter and a police accountability group for publishing information about Los Angeles Police Department officers (KTLA, 4/6/23); the LA Times (5/7/23) and other outlets came to the reporter and group’s defense.
And FAIR has covered the prosecution (and an eventual acquittal) of a Des Moines Register reporter who was covering a Black Lives Matter protest (FAIR.org, 3/16/21), and the trespassing convictions of two Asheville Blade reporters who were covering the police clearing of a homeless encampment (FAIR.org, 6/8/23).
National Bad Examples
Officials rationalize many of these actions against news outlets by the fact that journalists received information or witnessed something they weren’t supposed to. But that is, in fact, what journalism is. The point of reporting is not to rewrite press releases or glue official statements together, but to cultivate a trusted network of sources within government agencies, businesses, civic organizations, and other halls of power who pass on the real story because the public deserves to hear it.
Meyer sees the raid on his paper as part of the current moment when “respect for the media is at an all time low.” A lot of that has to do with Trumpism’s hatred of a free press and the branding of all journalistic criticism as “fake news”; Republican voters now use Nazi phrases to attack the free press (Time, 10/25/16) and even attack reporters physically (Guardian, 5/24/17). Trump’s election was followed by a spate of assaults on journalists who had the temerity to ask questions of elected officials and politicians (FAIR.org, 5/25/17).
But this sentiment within state power predates the Trump administration. The “War on Terror” gave the second Bush administration an excuse to threaten whistleblowers, and the Obama administration escalated those threats into prosecutions of leakers (Extra!, 9/11). Corporate media often took the side of the government when it silenced leaks to protect state power, especially after Edward Snowden revealed evidence of widespread National Security Agency spying on the US public (FAIR.org, 10/6/16).
The urge to silence high-level, national security leakers like Snowden or Manning is the same impulse that led a police raid into Meyer’s home and his paper’s office.
It might seem quaint to equate the predicament of the Marion County Record with the case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (New York Times, 12/21/20), whose reporting based on Chelsea Manning’s leak exposed potential U.S. war crimes. But the Kansas case shouldn’t be dismissed as provincial. Small local newspapers really are the main source challenging the sheriffs, county executives, and business leaders who call the shots in a great deal of the United States.
As The Kansas City Star (8/12/23) said, Meyer and the rest of his paper “represent one of the green shoots sprouting in a nation of expanding news deserts.” They are the “watchdogs of communities too small or too remote to attract the attention of big metropolitan dailies or TV stations.”
The urge to silence high-level, national security leakers like Snowden or Manning is the same impulse that led a police raid into Meyer’s home and his paper’s office. And the ability of police in prominent news settings like Washington, D.C., to arrest journalists for covering protests without provoking widespread condemnation from media power centers (FAIR.org, 9/26/17) sends a signal to authorities in less-visible venues that critics in the press are fair game. The temptation to swat the gadfly is so powerful at every level that journalists and press advocates have to constantly fight to keep from losing ground.
Meyer is doing just that, and promises to bring litigation. “We’re suing, not to get our stuff back. We want it back, but it’s not crucial,” he told FAIR, noting that this fight was about principles. “The big thing is, I don’t want to set a precedent and fold on this.” He added, “I don’t want anyone to go through this crap.”
When asked what he hopes will come out of this case, he laughed and said, “I’d like to see some people lose their jobs.”
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