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MARION, Kan. -- A small central Kansas police department is facing a torrent of criticism for raiding a local newspaper's office and the owner and publisher's home, seizing computers and cellphones, and, in the publisher's view, stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her weekend death. Several press freedom watchdogs condemned the Marion Police Department's actions as a blatant

A small town in Kansas has become a battleground over the First Amendment, after the local police force and county sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the Marion County Record. Raids of news organizations are exceedingly rare in the United States, with its long history of legal protections for journalists. At the Record, a family-owned paper with a circulation of about 4,000, the police

TOPEKA, Kansas -- The Society of Professional Journalists' board unanimously offered $20,000 to the family-owned Marion County Record for legal costs in wake of the seizure of newspaper and personal property by local law enforcement investigating allegations of identity theft and illegal use of a computer. The raid undermining operation of the weekly newspaper alarmed First Amendment champions

MARION, Kan. — A small newspaper and a police department in Kansas are at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech that is being watched around the country after police raided the office of the local newspaper and the home of its owner and publisher. Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones in the Friday raid, prompting press freedom watchdogs to