Marion County, located in central Kansas, will pay a total of $3 million to settle federal lawsuits stemming from the 2023 police raid of a family-owned, small-town newspaper.
The settlement, approved on Monday by the county’s board of commissioners, resolves allegations against the county for its role in the raid on the Marion County Record, a weekly paper serving a prairie town of about 1,900 residents. As part of the agreement, the county will issue an apology and “concede that wrongdoing likely occurred” during the searches, according to the Record.
“The admission of wrongdoing is the most important part,” said Eric Meyer, owner and editor of the Record. “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.”…