OPINION:
Last month’s police raid of the Marion County Record in Kansas has gotten a good deal of deserved coverage (“A judge told Kansas authorities to destroy electronic copies of newspaper’s files taken during raid,” web, Aug. 30).
This part of Kansas is where my wheat-farming family settled after emigrating from Eastern Europe seeking both land and freedom of expression.
However, I have been even more worried about other kinds of raids carried out against newspapers across America.
First, there have been many raids by monopolistic-minded corporations aimed at taking over papers and folding them into big chains, with the attendant loss of local reporting and an expansion of nationalist reporting.
Secondly, there have been regular raids into the opinion pages of newspapers conducted by tyrannical politicians and their minions pushing partisan disinformation.
Thirdly, there are daily raids by supposedly benevolent business advertisers that turn the newspaper’s truth-telling function into a sham. Unbridled greed and a desire to outpace the competition has resulted in a good deal of false advertising.
KIMBALL SHINKOSKEY
Woods Cross, Utah
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