Years after a newsroom raid, a settlement in Kansas

More than two years after local Kansas police raided the Marion County Record newsroom and co-owners’ home, city officials agreed to a settlement of more than $3 million.

On Nov. 10, the Record reported that the county will pay $300,000 to the paper, $200,000 to Record publisher Eric Meyer, $250,000 to former Record reporter Deb Gruver and $600,000 to reporter Phyllis Zorn, who retired from the paper after the agreement was confirmed. The county will also pay $1 million to the estate of Joan Meyer, Eric Meyer’s mother and Record co-owner, who died of sudden cardiac arrest a day after the raid.

The shocking 2023 raid, during which the outlet’s publishing equipment and several personal cellphones were seized, faced quick condemnation from First Amendment advocates. The police chief who spearheaded the raid, Gideon Cody, resigned that October, and Eric Meyer filed the federal lawsuit in April 2024, citing First Amendment violations.

Other federal suits by Meyer, Gruver and Zorn against city and county officials are ongoing.

“The admission of wrongdoing is the most important part,” Meyer said of the settlement. “In our democracy, the press is a watchdog against abuse. If the watchdog itself is the target of abuse, and all it does is roll over, democracy suffers.”

Other notable updates

• The Associated Press returned to court on Nov. 24 for a hearing in its effort to regain press access to the Oval Office after President Donald Trump removed the wire service for its editorial style policies in February.
• Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr launched an investigation into the BBC on Nov. 19, claiming “news distortion” days after Trump threatened a $1 billion defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster over the editing of the documentary “Panorama,” demanding an apology and monetary compensation. The BBC apologized to Trump for its “error in judgement” in editing the clip, but made it clear it would fight any defamation lawsuit.
• On Nov. 13, all remaining charges against CityBeat investigative reporter Madeline Fening from her July arrest while documenting a vigil were dismissed, eliminating the possibility of a trial in the new year. Fening was reporting from a bridge connecting Cincinnati, Ohio, with Covington, Kentucky, along with CityBeat photo intern Lucas Griffith, who was also arrested at the time. Griffith was convicted at a jury trial for failure to disperse and fined $50.
• After firing its adviser and ordering the Indiana Daily Student newspaper to cease all print publication, administrators at Indiana University Bloomington reversed their decree on Oct. 30 and lifted the ban. The print stoppage — the paper had continued to publish online — came after the university ordered the student paper to remove news content from print editions, which had been limited for budgetary reasons. The adviser, student media director Jim Rodenbush, sued on Oct. 30 for reinstatement.
• In October, multiple journalists, outlets and others filed a lawsuit after violent responses by federal law enforcement during ongoing anti-deportation protests in Broadview, Illinois. They won a temporary restraining order limiting policing tactics, which became a preliminary injunction on Nov. 6. On Nov. 19, the injunction was put on hold while the federal government appeals the ruling.

We’ve documented 33 assaults of journalists and other press freedom violations related to protests around immigration policies and enforcement in Illinois this year.

Good reads

You’ll hear from me again in mid-December when we release the Tracker’s 2025 arrest report, detailing all arrests or detainments of journalists in the United States this year. That analysis will build on our annual arrest report roundup dating to the Tracker’s 2017 launch.

Until then, catch up with our most-read analyses of the year: