IPA calls for the resignation of the police chief after raid on Kansas newspaper

Photo caption: Marion County Record office

The story of the Marion County Record, a weekly publication in Marion, Kansas has reverberated for almost a week now, nationally, and internationally. The raid on the newspaper’s office and the publisher’s home seizing computers, cell phones and reporter’s materials has been rebuked by newspapers, radio, television, and other news organizations far and wide. And rightfully so.

The Illinois Press Association headed by Crusader Publisher Dorothy R. Leavell and other newspapers around the state of Illinois see this as a major breach of the constitutional rights of “Freedom of the Press.”  “The danger that such a practice could be repeated around the country is real to me and other newspaper publishers as a dangerous precedence,” Leavell said.

The following letter written by Don Craven, president and CEO of the Illinois Press Association, adds the Association’s opinion of the dastardly act.  The good news is, in spite of the removal of necessary equipment to produce their weekly newspaper, it did not stop the press. Tuesday’s Marion County Record was published as usual. The saddest event is the death of the 98-year-old co-owner shortly after the raid.