A Kansas county agrees to pay $3 million and apologize over a raid on a small-town newspaper

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom.

Marion County sheriff's officers were involved in the raid on the Marion County Record and helped draft search warrants used by Marion city police to enter the newspaper's offices, the publisher's home and the home of a local city council member.

“They intentionally wanted to harass us for reporting the news, and you’re not supposed to do that in a democracy,” the editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, said Tuesday. He added he hoped the payment was large enough to discourage similar actions against other news organizations in the future.

The raid prompted five federal lawsuits against the county, the city of Marion and local officials. Meyer's 98-year-old mother Joan, the paper's co-owner, died of a heart attack the next day, something he blames on the stress of the raid.

Top BBC bosses resign after criticism of the broadcaster’s editing of a Trump speech

LONDON (AP) — The head of the BBC and the British broadcaster's top news executive both resigned Sunday after criticism of the way the organization edited a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The BBC said Director-General Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness had both decided to leave the corporation.

Britain’s publicly funded national broadcaster has been criticized for editing a speech Trump made on Jan. 6, 2021, before protesters attacked the Capitol in Washington.

Critics said the way the speech was edited for a BBC documentary last year was misleading and cut out a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Coming of age in the era of ‘fake news’

‘Let’s get media lit(erate)!” The punny slogan was my attempt to get students excited about fact-checking, current events and finding alternative sources to Wikipedia — a crowd-sourced platform anyone can edit.

Winnipeg students develop critical aptitude essential for navigating media landscape

One day in the fall of 2024, two of Lily Godinez Goodman’s Grade 5 students came to her with a question: Why didn’t their Earl Grey School have a newspaper, they wondered — and if they started one, would she serve as editor-in-chief?

TikTok as a tool — but for whom?

Canada already considers TikTok a threat to national security and the lives of many Canadian youth who, a recent investigation showed, collect huge amounts of personal data on every one of its users.

In praise of messy, unruly free speech

There’s a lot of obnoxious and hypocritical talk about free speech circulating online, in editorial pages and at the family dinner table.

Kimmel is back on ABC to big ratings, but some affiliates still refuse to air his show

NEW YORK (AP) — Jimmy Kimmel is back on his ABC late-night show, but it's still a mystery when — or if — viewers in cities such as Washington, Seattle and St. Louis will be able to see him again on their televisions.

ABC stations owned by the Nexstar and Sinclair corporations took Kimmel off the air last week on the same day the network suspended him for comments that angered supporters of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Those stations kept him off the air Tuesday, when ABC lifted the suspension. The unusual dispute attracted the attention of U.S. senators, who said they wanted to investigate the relationship between the affiliates and President Donald Trump's administration.

Kimmel returned with no apologies, but in an emotional monologue where he appeared close to tears, the host said that he was not trying to joke about the assassination. He also paid tribute to Kirk's widow.

And it got a large audience, with ABC reporting nearly 6.3 million people tuned in to the broadcast alone, despite the blackouts in many cities. As is often the case with late-night hosts' monologues, there was a larger audience online, with more than 15 million people watching Kimmel's opening remarks on YouTube by Wednesday evening. ABC says more than 26 million people watched Kimmel's return on social media, including YouTube.

North Dakota missing its Manitobans

Kay Rone used to spot plenty of Manitoba licence plates outside stores, hotels and restaurants throughout Grand Forks on weekends in past years.

There haven’t been nearly as many since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020.

“Now, you hardly see them in town,” said Rone, who owns Northern Roots Boutique, a women’s clothing store opposite Columbia Mall, which was once a big draw for cross-border shoppers.

She displays a window sign welcoming Canadians.

Read and research, before engaging your rage

It looked like Liberal arrogance of the first degree, deliberately blowing off a meeting of a major Parliamentary committee.

Conservative MP Larry Brock on X: “UNBELIEVABLE. Parliament is back, but Liberal members of the Justice Committee are MISSING IN ACTION. Crime is out of control, Canadians are terrified, but Conservatives are ready to restore safety to our streets.”

Ditto, Conservative MP Roman Babar: “It’s 3:30 pm on a Tuesday. The Standing Committee on Justice is supposed to be meeting right now. Crime is out of control and justice reform is desperately needed. The Committee’s Conservative members are ready to work, but Liberal members refuse to show up. Unbelievable!”

You get the point. Problem is, there was no meeting. No staff. No translators. Just four Conservative MPs.

We all live in glass houses now

In the 19th century, stocks and pillories were still in use in Canada, with people put on public display, their necks, hands or feet clamped into hinged wooden frames for a few hours as punishment for crimes like public drunkenness or disorder, theft and perjury.