Free the Press: Police shouldn’t be allowed to forcefully obtain confidential information from a newspaper

Reporter Phyllis Zorn of the Marion County Record newspaper in Kansas looked into a tip about a local restaurant owner driving with an invalid license by going online to Kansas’ Revenue Department’s public search engine. She typed in the restaurant owner’s name, driver’s license number and date of birth — a legal and common practice for reporters protected by the First Amendment.

A week later, six police officers arrived at the Record’s newsroom with a search warrant. They raided the office space and home of the paper’s 98-year-old owner on the pretense that Zorn illegally obtained the driving records. However, Zorn was completely innocent. She never broke the law, and the paper never should’ve been raided in the first place.

Police shouldn’t be allowed to infringe on press freedom without a subpoena allowing the paper the chance to challenge their actions and be informed of the facts in a pending case.

During the raid, the officers seized computers, servers, personal cell phones and files, according to The Washington Post. Due to this lack of devices, reporters were forced to work overtime — even pulling an all-nighter — to turn their issue in on time. All because of a crime they didn’t even commit.

The police must’ve forgotten about the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedom — safeguarding the right for newspapers to publish without restraint — because they didn’t seem to care that the devices they stole hindered the Record’s ability to publish.

They also neglected the Fourth Amendment — prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure — seeing as the police didn’t hesitate to aggressively search through a 98-year-old woman’s personal items despite her protests.

Due to the controversy of the raids, ten days later, the county prosecutor reviewed the search warrant and determined that there was insufficient evidence to justify the raids, so the items must be returned. But not before the police copied Zorn’s personal data from her computer onto a flash drive, which they were legally forced to return — yet still possess. 

It’s unacceptable and illegal for the police to retain information they gained by unlawful means. If we can’t trust the police to follow the law, we might as well live without rules.

And even if Zorn had obtained information about the restaurant owner illegally, a subpoena — not a search warrant — is required by federal statute in order to obtain evidence from a newsroom, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The Record has the right to receive a hearing to protest the search request of the police. But there was no way for them to exercise that right since they didn’t even know the police had a request in the first place.

If the police are concerned for public safety and require aid from a newspaper to collect necessary information, then by all means, politely knock on the door and ask them. However, barging into a newsroom unannounced to steal reporters’ personal devices and confidential files based on a biased complaint from a restaurateur and no prior subpoena? That’s an obvious no. 

Zorn had looked up the restaurant owner on a public website — an act comparable to looking up a friend on Instagram or Googling a teacher. She did nothing that warranted a two-hour raid on her workplace, complete with snatching a writer’s personal cell phone out of her hand. 

Journalists around the world are reading about the mistreatment of this fellow newspaper by the police, and it’s not a story they want repeated in their futures.

And though the PRESS Act ensures reporters cannot be forced to disclose information to the government without the opportunity to challenge those demands in court, the Marion County Police did exactly that. There must be legal consequences for skirting the law. The Record has the full right to sue the police and magistrate judge that granted the search warrant for a violation of human rights, specifically First and Fourth Amendment rights.

The police shouldn’t have the right to raid a newspaper without first issuing a subpoena — whether that paper is innocent or not.

Read more about the raid on the Marion County Record here:

Marion County Record publishes in defiance of police raid — and gets seized property back

Judge who signed Kansas newspaper search warrant had 2 DUI arrests, reports say

Items seized in a police raid at the Marion County Record newspaper in Kansas returned and headed for forensic analysis, publisher says