The Marion, KS Police Department raided the small town newspaper, the Marion County Record, on August 11, 2023. The paper had been investigating allegations against the police chief just a few months prior, according to reporting by NPR, so the raid raised questions about freedom of the press. Last November, Marion County agreed to pay over $3 million to parties in five lawsuits against the county to settle claims against its officials. In August 2026, the county agreed to pay former Marion County Reporter Phyllis Zorn $850,000. KSMU's Michele Skalicky talked with Eric Meyer, president and majority owner of Hoch Publishing Co., which publishes the Marion County Record, ahead of his visit to Springfield, MO on October 14, 2026, at 7 p.m. at the Library Center's Hatch Auditorium.
Skalicky: Eric, for those who aren't familiar with your story or maybe don't remember, what happened on August 11th, 2023, at your Kansas newspaper, the Marion County Record and at your home?
Meyer: Well, we were sort of the canary in the coal mine of things that have happened to a lot of people since then. Police showed up at our newspaper office and at my home that I shared with my 98-year-old mother and at the home of the vice mayor whose search for evidence of us having obtained a driving record illegally, even though you can't even obtain it illegally, the only way to obtain it is legally. But they sat there. They took all of our computers from the newspaper, all the news computers, and they took my mother's computer and everything else. And they stayed there. They stayed at my mother's house for 2 and a half hours. As many as seven of them were in the house. She kept complaining to them that she was, they were stressing her out and she was going to have a heart attack or a stroke or something. And she was really in, you know, pretty good health for a 98-year-old. But the next day, she did, in fact, die of sudden cardiac arrest. And we tried to put out a paper without computers, which is kind of challenging to do. We had some old Windows XP machines that had been thrown into our junk room and dragged them out and hooked them up and were able to put out a paper that week. But it was a raid that later was disavowed by the county attorney who hadn't seen the search warrant before it came through. The judge who signed it was later told by the state judicial conduct people that, well, she didn't do anything wrong, but in the future, we would advise her to read things before she signs them. So, it was kind of a comedy of errors that this got through.
Skalicky: Sure sounds like it. Once the story of what happened got out, of course, there was immediate condemnation of the police department's actions from all over. And it was a very — it had to have been a very stressful time for you, I'm so sorry you lost your mom, trying to get a paper out under those circumstances. How did that support help at what had to have been an extremely stressful time?
Meyer: Well, you know. The time is such that I don't even remember most of what went on for those next few days. We were just working as hard as we could to get the paper out. And we, we didn't, we didn't have the nameplate for our paper, you know, the thing on the front page that says what the name of the newspaper is? We didn't even have a copy of that because they took our file server. They took we had it on DVDs, but they took all the computers that had DVD players on them from the office, from my home, from everywhere. So, we had to scrounge around and recreate all that. We spent a couple of all all nighters getting the paper out, but, and just talking to reporters from all over everywhere, I mean, all around the world. And they were looking at us probably my favorite comment. We won an award later called the Maria Ressa Award, named after the Nobel Prize winning journalist from the Philippines. She was following the story in Manila. And she said what really amazed her was, she says, we're used to that sort of stuff happening here in the Philippines. But we always thought in America that couldn't happen. But, you know, even the Voice of America came here and did something with us. We had Le Monde and we had The Guardian and, you know, the Washington Post, New York Times, and everybody else in the world was — CNN. We even got put on an ESPN sports call in show at some point. So, I mean, we were contacted by everybody. It was a whirlwind of an adventure. It was wonderful to have the support. But I think people in positions of authority already knew it was wrong. And they started calling local officials and saying, oh, you shouldn't have done this almost immediately because of the publicity.
Skalicky: What you guys did is surely a dedication to the profession of journalism. What do you think the incident did for press freedom in the U.S. and of course, the major legal victory last year? Did it strengthen it, show how vulnerable it is, or what?
Meyer: The answer to that question is yes to both. It strengthened it and showed how vulnerable it is. I mean, we now live in an era in which intimidation of the media through legal means is an everyday practice. Now, most of the cases, they're unfounded. They get overturned, they do something else to it. But most of the time they have to deal with the inconvenience of it. So, it's, it's hassling people. It's, you know, it and oh yeah, you know, 3 or 4 weeks from now you can get it back. But you still have to deal with the hassling for your milk money. And I mean, it has happened to, I don't know how many journalists, big or small, all over everywhere. And it's happening still today. The nice thing is it seems to have mobilized some people to watch out for it. The problem is we haven't figured out how to stop it yet.
Skalicky: Which leads me to a question related to that. As someone who has lived experience as a journalist, a newspaper owner and as the victim of a police raid on your paper and home, what are your thoughts on how we're doing as a country in protecting freedom of the press?
Meyer: Not well, and part of it, you know, you're always going to have some bully types who get elected to some positions and try to use their clout to further their own personal needs, whether that is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or at Main Street in a small town. The problem is the average citizen needs to be more aggressive in responding to this. We live in an age in which people are sort of afraid to challenge it. They know it's wrong. They see it's wrong. And they'll talk about a little bit to themselves, but they won't really get involved and engaged in being part of the solution. So, I'm hoping that one of the things that will come out of this is people will just start saying, you know, enough of this is enough. We're not going to put up with it anymore.
Skalicky: Remind people why freedom of the press is so important to a democracy.
Meyer: Well, democracy depends on truth, and truth depends on a fair exchange of information. When you don't have a fair exchange of information, when all you hear are the echo chambers of what I call anti-social media, and the only voice you ever hear is voices you agree with, it becomes, society becomes so polarized that we can't get anything done. And everyone, everything is just those so and so's out there. And we even saw this in the response to our raid. We got thousands of supportive messages. And interestingly, they were from Republicans and Democrats and people overwhelmingly people who worked in law enforcement, by the way. But I remember going through my emails one time and got a message and says, so sorry for what they did to you. It must have been those damn Democrats and you click next. And it said literally, so sorry for what they did to you. It must have been those damned Republicans. There aren't too many things that unite people like the opposition to this rate is. This is one of those taboos in American society is you don't try to influence people whose job it is to just give you information. You may not like the information. You may think we're biased. We aren't. I mean, you may think that we're trying to do it for financial gain. And there are people in this world, all you have to do is turn on TV late at night on the cable channels, and you'll see them, who are trying to spin things just to ratchet up debate. They aren't trying to help democracy. They aren't trying to provide information to people. And what we as a public need to do is just stop listening to them. I mean, I think it's good to listen to every side of a story. So, yeah, I might listen to, you know, Up First from NPR in the morning and listen to Fox News that evening, so I'm getting every conceivable angle of something. And really, I think Up First does more to provide every conceivable angle than Fox News does. But expose yourself to lots of different ideas, lots of different things before you come to arrive at a conclusion and then be open to the fact that, hey, you may have made a wrong, may have, may have decided wrong. People just don't want to do that. They don't want to make waves. They don't want to get involved. And when you don't get involved, you just leave it to the bullies to take over. And if you've ever read anything about how any dictatorial power rises in this world, this is how it happens.
Skalicky: And you're going to be in Springfield October 14th, and you're going to be talking about what happened to you — and some other things. What can we expect from your talk on the 14th?
Meyer: Well, a call to increase engagement. A call to journalists to do even more. I mean, we have to do more with less. This is the order of the day, whether you're in public broadcasting or commercial newspapers or whatever, you're doing more with less. And we need to stop pandering to anybody and just get back to reporting the news and hope that we can get it, do it in a way that will engage the audience and then warn that if we don't, well, we're starting to see some of the consequences these days. And they're the early, early precursors of something worse to come where we might not really have this democracy to hold on to anymore. There's a big move afoot right now to say that communism is this creeping threat that's going to take over democracy. No, I think that what's going to take over democracy is dumbocracy. And that's where people just don't care about what the issues are. They don't care about facts. They only care about opinions and their opinion is right and everybody else is wrong and they're evil. We need to accept the fact that we can have disagreements, and we need to come together as a society to resolve those. And journalists play a crucial role in that because we're the people that are going to provide the information on both sides of issues that allow people to come together, recognize each other's concerns and come up with a compromise. And I know compromise is viewed as a negative word these days in almost every political circle, but I think the public's finally getting tired of it not getting anywhere.
Skalicky: Well, you certainly have an important message to share, and we will see you on the 14th. You'll be speaking at the Library Center's Hatch Auditorium. The event is at 7, and it's open to the public. Thank you, Eric Meyer, for talking with me.
Meyer: Thank you for calling today.
