Tom on the Press

 A small newspaper in rural Kansas has become the latest First Amendment battleground case.  Apparently the paper, The Marion County Register, (circulation 4,000- give or take), was investigating a local restaurateur who had been dinged by the cops on a DUI charge some 15 years ago.  Somehow, the restaurant owner prevailed upon the county sheriff and the local police chief to conduct a raid on the basis of what appears to be a spurious case of 'Identity Theft', and during their raid last Friday, they seized computers, cellphones and pretty much everything needed to publish a newspaper in this day and age. Observers speculate that the case has more to do with tensions between the town's power structure and the local media than it does with the eatery owner's embarrassing lapse all those years ago.  I suspect that this story has legs and that we'll be hearing more about it as we move into the Fall.

The press has always enjoyed a privileged plane among American institutions because the Founders understood that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that a free press would keep everybody honest, or at least that was the hope.  The case of John Peter Zenger, a colonial era publisher in New York City was accused of seditious libel by the then Royal Governor of the colony, William Cosby, when he published a dissent by the presiding judge in a case involving Gov Cosby.  Under English Common Law, which was the basis of the colonial legal system, truth was no defense against libel.  In practice, truth just made such charges more serious, because they were more believable. To make a long and interesting story short, the resolution of the Zenger case, in which he was acquitted, established truth as an absolute defense against libel.  We recognize the right to free speech and a free press in the First Amendment to the Constitution; the so-called 'Bill of Rights'