Shelter Island Reporter editorial: Seized … but not silenced
It’s extremely rare that a small town American weekly newspaper gets international headlines. It’s only when extremely bad things happen, like the recent police raid on the office of the Marion County Record, circulation 2,035, in Marion, Kansas.
It seems the local police chief had axes to grind with the paper, and when a local businesswoman wanted to conceal a drunk driving charge, he saw an opportunity and sent in the cops, who seized computers, notes, and cellphones.
The paper refused to be intimidated, and hit their deadline without the equipment. The editor produced one of the immortal front-page headlines in American journalism history: “Seized … But not silenced.”
What’s particularly awful about the actions of the Marion authorities is that it’s part of a spiking trend in our country, not only the authorities trying to shut down a paper, but individuals threatening, trying to intimidate, and attacking journalists.
This summer, two National Public Radio reporters had their homes vandalized by three men. In a town in Oklahoma, a newspaper aired a recording of the sheriff and some local officials talking seriously about executing reporters. In 2022, Jeff German, a reporter with the Las Vegas Review Journal, was found dead, stabbed to death allegedly by a public official German had investigated.
And remember the candidate for Congress in Montana a few years back who body-slammed a reporter to the ground for asking a question? That wasn’t an isolated incident by the manly-man candidate. The worst was five years ago when an individual killed five staffers of the Annapolis, Maryland Capital Gazette in their newsroom.
Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation said, “There has been an increase in hostility towards the press, driven by the rhetoric from presidential candidates and public officials, which then infect lower levels of government, including police departments, and that leads to instances like we saw in Kansas.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker — a nonpartisan news website and database that provides information on the number of journalists being arrested, jailed, assaulted and harassed for doing their jobs — has documented close to 1,750 violations since 2017 of actions against the media by law enforcement, politicians or private citizens.
This crisis of American freedom can be tracked to Donald Trump entering presidential politics in 2015. Almost daily, the Trump boom box screams that the free press is “the enemy of the people,” “disgusting,” “dishonest” and “scum.” Many Trump supporters scoff at people who take these statements seriously.
It’s only entertaining rhetoric, they say, it doesn’t mean anything, the only ones upset at constant attacks on the First Amendment are liberal snowflakes. (Which reminds us of our columnist, Robert Lipsyte, who once identified himself as not a snowflake but “a snowball. With a rock inside.”) No, it’s not just harmless jokes. Just tote up the results instigated by the vile screeds that are directed at journalists.
Why do people attack freedom of the press? Easy. Because they’re encouraged every day to do it. And they think they can get away with it. But they won’t. There are more of us than them, and the headline of the gallant little Marion County Record is our rallying call.
