Indy Digest: Aug. 14, 2023
Journalism is a weird job, for myriad reasons—one of the main ones being that you’re going to be angering powerful people if you’re doing it right.
In Marion, Kan., the weekly Marion County Record was apparently doing it right—and the angry powerful people lashed out.
Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones from the publisher and staff of the Marion County Record in the Friday raid, prompting press freedom watchdogs to condemn the actions of local authorities as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. The police searches were apparently prompted by a complaint from a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, who accused the newspaper of invading her privacy after it obtained copies of her driving record, which included a 2008 conviction for drunk driving.
Newspaper publisher and co-owner Eric Meyer maintains that the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and Police Chief Gideon Cody’s record are the main reason for the raids. Newell says the newspaper targeted her after she ordered Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant earlier this month during a political event.
There are multiple layers to this story, and you can read coverage of the mess from all sorts of news sources, as the raid has become a big deal. The Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news source in the state, has been all over the story from the start.
Two of those layers, briefly: One :Both the local police and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation are not apologizing, claiming the raid came during a search of “credible allegations,” and that the media is not above the law.
What an awful, awful mess.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is right: Journalists aren’t above the law. But when you start to read the details of what happened … well, the details scream “law enforcement overreach,” at least to my eyes. For starters, as the Reflector reported: “The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took ‘everything we have,’ Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.” That much law enforcement heft for a invasion-of-privacy investigation?! (By the way, the Marion County Register will indeed get an issue out this week, with the help of the Kansas Press Association and other organizations.)
Another fishy detail: The county doesn’t seem to want to release the affidavit supporting the search warrant … and it’s possible that the affidavit doesn’t even exist.
Yeah, journalists aren’t above the law. But neither are police chiefs; there are laws on the books protecting press freedoms for a reason.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
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More News
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• Palm Springs police are investigating an attack outside of a bar/restaurant as a possible anti-trans hate crime. News Channel 3 reports: “A shocking assault caught on camera outside a downtown Palm Springs bar has left the victim, Skyy Perez, shaken and bruised. Perez, who is a transgender woman, says the attack was targeted due to her identity. The incident occurred late (on July 29) behind The Village, and police are now investigating it as a possible hate crime. According to Perez, the incident began when her phone was stolen inside the bar. She approached a nearby woman to check her bag, but security escorted Perez out, leading to the attack in the alleyway. ‘She hit me with a sandal in the back of my head, and I fell to the floor, I kind of lost consciousness. And then the other two girls that were with her came and they were like basically jumping me and tore my clothes,’ Perez said. ‘I was in disbelief and a rage that I got hit for simply existing.'”
• The wildfire in Maui is now the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than 100 years. ABC News says: “The blaze, which started on Aug. 8 on Hawaii’s second-largest island, has already surpassed death tolls tallied in California’s biggest wildfires in recent years, including the Camp Fire, which ripped across Butte County in November 2018, claiming the lives of 85 people and destroying the town of Paradise. As of Monday, Maui emergency officials said 96 people have been confirmed dead in the fire, and cautioned that the death toll will likely climb. The cause of the Maui fire remains under investigation.”
• There’s another possible problem regarding the use of Wegovy and Ozempic for weight loss. The Associated Press explains: “Patients who take blockbuster drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic for weight loss may face life-threatening complications if they need surgery or other procedures that require empty stomachs for anesthesia. This summer’s guidance to halt the medication for up to a week may not go far enough, either. Some anesthesiologists in the U.S. and Canada say they’ve seen growing numbers of patients on the weight-loss drugs who inhaled food and liquid into their lungs while sedated because their stomachs were still full—even after following standard instructions to stop eating for six to eight hours in advance. The drugs can slow digestion so much that it puts patients at increased risk for the problem, called pulmonary aspiration, which can cause dangerous lung damage, infections and even death, said Dr. Ion Hobai, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.” Eek!
• One new consumer recall: Candles sold at Target. CBS News reports: “Target has recalled about 2.2 million scented candles sold exclusively at its stores because the candles’ glass jars may suddenly shatter while the wick is burning. The recall, issued Thursday by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), affects Threshold Glass Jar 5.5 ounce 1-Wick and 20 ounce 3-Wick Candles sold in a variety of scents like Blue Agave & Cactus, Frosted Holly Berries and Pineapple Sage. Manufactured in Vietnam, the candles come in glass jars that can crack or break during use, posing laceration and burn risks, (according to) the recall notice on its website. Target has so far received 19 reports of the jars breaking or cracking during use. One such incident caused a minor injury, the CPSC said. Target sold the candles nationwide for between $3 and $12 from February 2020 and July 2023.”
• Another: ice cream! The New York Times reports: “An ice cream company based in Brooklyn has issued a recall of all flavors of its soft serve ice cream and sorbet brand after two people who ate its vanilla chocolate flavor fell sick and were sent to the hospital, according to the company and health officials. The illnesses were possibly linked to listeria, a type of bacteria that can cause serious sickness in people 65 or older and miscarriages and premature births in pregnant women, health officials said. The company, Real Kosher Ice Cream, said in a statement on Wednesday that it would immediately recall all six flavors of its Soft Serve on the Go Cups, packaged retail versions of soft serve ice cream and sorbet.” The product was sold in 19 states—California included—and the District of Columbia.
• And finally … the James Webb Space Telescope keeps discovering really cool things. CNN reports on one of the latest: “A cosmic object in the shape of a glowing question mark has photobombed one of the latest images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope—and scientists think they know what it might be. … It could be a merger of two galaxies that, at probably billions of light-years away, are much farther away than Herbig-Haro 46/47 (the stars at the center of the original photo), said Christopher Britt, education and outreach scientist in the office of public outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages the Webb telescope’s science operations. There are ‘many, many galaxies outside of our own Milky Way,’ Britt said. ‘This looks like the kind of thing that you get fairly frequently—as galaxies grow and evolve over cosmic time—which is that they sometimes collide with their near neighbors. And when that happens, they can get distorted into all kinds of different shapes—including a question mark, apparently.”
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