Hello, my name is Adam and I am failing to blog

“Hi Adam”

(Adam looks around the room of vague, tired people) Thank you.

It is simply my desire to share more, with more people, about real things.

The police raided a newspaper in Kansas, citing that journalists must have done something corrupt to uncover the truth about local restaurateur Kari Newell. The Marion County Record decided to publish a story about Newell’s 2008 drunk driving conviction with public information Newell confirmed in a city council meeting. Two of the reporters raided were previously ejected from a state congressional event, by Newell, because the restaurant owner kept receiving bad press. Newell said their critical coverage of local police and officials was “toxic” and that was why they weren’t welcome at the event.

Pettiness and retaliative adulthood is not a crime. It is childish and shameful. Would I read a news story about one restaurant owner getting a DUI? Going through a divorce? Getting kicked out of a Congressman’s fundraiser? Is any of that a compelling story of corruption? No. I would have read the combative nature of the article and skipped right past this in my theoretical Marion County newspaper.

What makes the US different from a totalitarian state is that a small newspaper can report about this and normally does not then get searched by the police. The Record cited a total seizure of all computers and work tech meaning they needed to cobble together devices and notes to print the next issue of the paper from other sources.

This is literal limiting of the press.

For example this Marion press vs police situation: the conflict between a citizen and the press materializes in their disagreements and lawsuit(s) to assert the truth. Journalistic integrity seems not only totally normal but very likely tested in perpetuity of a free press vs the powerful. A human working for the press will attempt to tell the truth or unearth hidden failings in police, politicians; then a person in power will attempt to defend their stature and power. This would be part a larger conversation only defendable for both parties through seeking irrefutable facts and attempting to live virtuously.

It is a bother to know so much about Kari Newell’s life. That seems mostly their personal struggle, and their business; only known throughout the world now because they are an element in the larger problem. A police officer taking away journalistic freedom and the tools to-do-journalism is the beginning of an oppressive government, a warning sign.

How does a journaler, thinker, maker like myself write about pictures or food or exercise while something like this has occurred? The answer is to disagree vocally, and hopefully to do so with a clear argument and a dispassionate stance about what matters in life.

Every citizen has a right to be left alone, not slandered, to love who they want to love, to care for and change their body, in all the ways they wish as long as it does not interfere with everyone else’s liberties. This includes the institution of the free press. This means that book bans in libraries should be impossible, that if a person disagrees with a culture or a way of being they have every right to not participate but cannot ”edit” people. It is in a book, it is in the paper. Don’t like the book don’t buy the book, likewise the papers. Welcome to America, like, Amendment Uno.