"On 11 August 2023, police officers executed a search warrant on the offices of the Marion County Record, a small, family-owned paper in central Kansas. Local law enforcement seized the computers, cell phones and reporting materials from all staff, as well as from the homes of one city council member and paper co-owner Eric Meyer, without incident though they met the impassioned resistance of Meyer's 98-year-old mother Joan, the paper's other co-owner, who threw her walker to the ground and declared the raid Nazi stuff."
"This is illegal, Eric Meyers warns the officers, as seen in a new documentary on the episode. You're going to be on national news tonight. He was not wrong. Though the raid could seem small potatoes, Marion being a rural town of around 1,900 about 60 miles north of Wichita, it soon became international news a symbol of press freedom under attack in a country whose president routinely declares media to be the enemy of the people."
"In national press, the story was quick, troubling and tragic, especially after it was revealed that Joan, stressed beyond her limits by the raid, died of a heart attack the next day. In Marion, however, the story was, as small town things tend to go, much more complex, idiosyncratic and gossipy, personal histories and resentments refracted under the spotlight. Seized, directed by Sharon Liese, manages the difficult task of bridging the two perspectives without jarring the viewer,"
On 11 August 2023 police executed a search warrant at the Marion County Record, seizing computers, cell phones and reporting materials from staff and from homes of the paper's co-owner and a city council member. The seizure provoked an emotional scene involving co-owner Joan Meyer and triggered widespread national attention as a symbol of threats to press freedom; Joan Meyer died of a heart attack the following day after the raid. In Marion the episode catalyzed local divisions, gossip and complex personal histories. The documentary Seized portrays both the national implications and the local complexities, allowing characters room to reveal contradictions.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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