Press Freedom: Top 5 Stories of the Week | VOA News

VOA's Press Freedom Reporter Cristina Caicedo Smit highlights the top five stories that emerged this week on press freedom.

During a police raid earlier this month on the Marion County Record newspaper in Kansas, law enforcement secretly copied data from at least one computer they seized during the raid and didn’t return it when ordered to do so, the outlet’s attorney said.

Officers illegally copied 17 gigs of data from the newspaper’s computer system, said Bernie Rhodes, the newspaper’s lawyer.

"This simply raises even further the level of suspicion that what occurred here was not done for any legitimate purpose," Rhodes told VOA.

On Aug. 11, local police — led by Chief Gideon Cody — raided the weekly newspaper’s office and the co-owner’s home. They seized computers, cellphones, hard drives and other items, which were then held in a storage locker at the sheriff’s office.

Police later said the raid was over a complaint filed by a local restaurant owner that a Record reporter had committed identity theft by looking up public information through the Kansas Department of Revenue website.