"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Since Donald Trump began his second term as president this year, we've been collectively watching in horror as major institutions either fall over themselves to conform to his agenda or simply give up fighting against it. It's spreading the aura of authoritarianism all across the country. There was one major bright spot in the battle against authoritarian creep this week, however, in Marion, Kansas."
""These days, there's an awful lot of people who get abused, get treated by the bully of government officials, and they just kind of roll over and go off into a corner somewhere," Eric Meyer, the editor and publisher of the Record, told WBUR this week. "But the press is supposed to be a watchdog, and if you attack the watchdog and the watchdog rolls over, it isn't much of a watchdog anymore.""
A tiny Marion County Record newspaper and its publisher endured an unlawful raid tied to local political drama two years ago. Law enforcement officers raided the publisher's home and the paper's office after the paper received an anonymous tip about a local restaurateur. The raid contributed to a national outcry, coalescing media companies around First Amendment concerns and coinciding with an apparent death of an elderly woman. The Record received a $3 million payout and a written apology admitting local officials' wrongdoing. The paper operates with a seven-person staff reporting on a town of about 1,900 residents.
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