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.

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?

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The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, is disappointed with us.