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Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

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Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#121

Post by BenjiWiebe »

gotoeleven wrote: post #67
xadhominemx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that a raid on a tiny kanas newspaper is a major national story is a sign that the press is pretty interested in protecting the press.

They are very interested in stories like this because this gives them the chance to work themselves into high dudgeon about a shitty little paper no one cares about. This way they have something to point to when they pull their "50 intelligence officials said this is russian disinfo" bullshit. "We're not unprincipled, self-serving, corrupt morons look how huffy we got about this tiny paper in kansas!"

Hey, Marion county resident checking in. I care about that paper. It's interesting.

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#122

Post by sanderjd »

Kapura wrote: post #48

This is really, really upsetting to be happening in my country. I know it is a very big country, and Kansas isn't exactly proximate, but we are either a country that protects the press, or we are a country where the press protects those who have power. If this is allowed to pass without the people ordering the raid fired, I am not optimistic about what the future holds.

I would argue that we don't know yet whether the system has worked or failed here. No amount of high idealism written on parchment paper can keep small people given power from using it corruptly. What matters is what happens then. If everyone were to shrug this off and say "well of course, that's just the way things go in America", then yep, I'm totally with you that this is really upsetting.

But I don't think that's what's happening here at all. I have seen this story all over the place in national news. And what I think is that the mere fact that any of us living nowhere near this little town are aware this happened means that the people responsible for it are in deep sh*t. I think they'll be made an example of. I think the state and federal justice systems will be racing each other to make an example of them.

And if I'm right about that, it's not an upsetting indictment of the system, it's an affirmation of its success.

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#123

Post by sanderjd »

winter_blue wrote: post #78
adventured wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a really big country and there's very little that can stop something like this from happening upfront. A corrupt person is always going to make it some distance before they're stopped, before the corrupt action gets enough sunlight on it. Said corrupt person isn't going to always make it easy to spot/stop, or easy to prosecute. You have to prosecute and pursue justice after the crime/s, not before. Justice is r…

There is a duty/obligation on the U.S. federal government to protect freedom of the press, especially if the organs of a state government act to violate it. Given that the KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) was in on it, and given that a Kansas district judge signed a search warrant in the absence of an affidavit (which I'm sure this judge was well-aware was needed, but it seems this judge simply didn't care about…

> There is a duty/obligation on the U.S. federal government to protect freedom of the press, especially if the organs of a state government act to violate it.

But you seem to be commenting as if the U.S. federal government has already failed to uphold this duty. But that makes no sense because this just happened. Now that this is widespread national news, there is very little chance that these criminals get to walk away from this. These people are all going down, whether on state or federal charges (or both). But it will take months or years, because that's how long it takes.

There is almost certainly a story here about how it requires widespread news attention to get something like this sorted out, but once there is widespread news attention, the jig is up.

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#124

Post by sanderjd »

petsfed wrote: post #86
andsoitis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we see this abuse of power all the time and no one pays the consequences Where there is no consequence to the police departments go after the press who are investigating them? I don’t know that we see that all the time! In fact, that’s why this story is news!

A quick search revealed at least 10 distinct incidents in the US over the last 4 years (mainly in summer 2020) of reporters identifying themselves as such, and then being attacked by police. I haven't done the work to see how often there were repercussions for those attacks, but I'm willing to be its pretty rare.

Your quick search doesn't seem to have revealed something that is the same as the story we're discussing.

Like, I totally agree with you about qualified immunity and law enforcement abuses of power, but come on, you're using this story to make extremely tangential points.

This isn't an example of law enforcement attacks on the press going unpunished. I saw this on the Today show this morning. This is mainstream national news. The criminals who perpetrated this are no longer the beneficiaries of a system that is corruptly stacked in their favor, they are f'd. They will be speaking to the US DoJ, and soon, and the conversation will not go well.

For sure, when abuses of power don't get widespread attention, they can easily go unchecked. And that's bad. But this isn't that.

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#125

Post by sanderjd »

mindslight wrote: post #97
adventured wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a really big country and there's very little that can stop something like this from happening upfront. A corrupt person is always going to make it some distance before they're stopped, before the corrupt action gets enough sunlight on it. Said corrupt person isn't going to always make it easy to spot/stop, or easy to prosecute. You have to prosecute and pursue justice after the crime/s, not before. Justice is r…

> You have to prosecute and pursue justice after the crime/s, not before. Justice is rarely a fast event While I'm sympathetic to your comment in isolation, do you think there is any chance that after the slow wheels of justice do turn, these violent thugs and their facilitators are actually going to end up in prison for armed assault, robbery, kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, etc? This is the breakdown in the rule o…

They are going to end up in prison for different crimes than those ones. (Although "criminal conspiracy" will show up in there somewhere, probably.) I don't think the specific crimes are really the point here...

This is not a demonstration of the breakdown of the rule of law, until the law actually fails to act on it. And I think that's incredibly unlikely at this point. But maybe the justice system will indeed fail to act on this, and then we should have this conversation and you'll probably find I agree with you.

But it's impossible for the justice system to have acted on this yet.

It's good to be outraged; our outrage is why this will be acted upon, so we must maintain that. But it's, frankly, dumb, to jump to this "the entire system is broken because these people are still walking free after a non-zero number of days!". That's just not how it works!

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#126

Post by sanderjd »

staplers wrote: post #80
mkovach wrote: post #50

Seems to me this might be plain old intimidation. The folks involved, which includes the Police Chef, see that somebody is leaking information to the press and a trying very hard to find they leak(s). Since they can't figure out who, and the press isn't publishing anything they are cranking up the heat. In both cases he says that they are investigating allegations. In fact, at one point it is said, they turned over i…

Gotta imagine they're onto a big, long thread if they're trying this hard to cover it up.

Yep, and it just blew up in their face. The most important rule of breaking laws in your small town is to not do something that shows up on the national morning news.

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#127

Post by sanderjd »

remote_phone wrote: post #14

Who has authority to investigate the police department for this obvious corruption? Can anyone be held accountable?

Everyone. These people are totally screwed. The state of Kansas will be racing to prosecute this before the feds get to it first.

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#129

Post by sanderjd »

plagiarist wrote: post #9
sixothree wrote: post #5

Checks and balances are needed.

I fear this will be another egregious violation of the Constitution ignored under qualified immunity. Prosecuting egregious violations of the Constitution instead of allowing police to do whatever they like would be a good check/balance.

I'll certainly be following it, but I highly doubt this.

Re: Police raid of a Kansas newsroom raises alarms about violations of press freedom

#130

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

arunharidas wrote: post #90

NPR cheered when conservative media got targeted and when they came after them they're crying violation of freedom of press. You can't have the cake and eat it too.

Targeted in what way that was very likely illegal/corrupted? Gonna need to cite a source for your claims.
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