Record owners to receive Citation of Courage

Joan and Eric Meyer are among 13 individuals and organizations named last week as First Amendment Award honorees by the national Radio Television Digital News Association.

All will be honored at an awards ceremony March 9 at the Watergate Hotel in Washington.

The association of broadcast news directors selected the Meyers, according to a press release, for their “brave and defiant response” after police seized computers, cell phones, and more during raids Aug. 11 on the Marion County Record office and their home.

In honoring them with a Citation of Courage, it noted that Joan, co-owner of the paper, died the next day at age 98, and that the newspaper, where her son, Eric, is publisher, “was not silenced by the raid and continues its watchdog reporting.”

Other winners are Gio Benitez of ABC News, Lauren Chooljian of New Hampshire Public Radio, Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews of CBS News, Dylan Jones and Jesse Walden of Spectrum News 13, ProPublica, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), Clarissa Ward of CNN, Kristen Welker of NBC News, and Phil Williams of WTVF-TV in Nashville.

Chooljian and Meyer also are scheduled to speak April 12 at the 36th annual Media and the Law Seminar at the Intercontinental Hotel at the Plaza in Kansas City.

The conference, titled “Under Attack: Existential Threats to Journalism and Free Speech,” suggests that the raid of the Record “spotlights just one of the potential perils journalists face as they gather and report the news in the face of shifting social, political, and technological landscapes.”

Conference organizers say the event will examine how news organizations and their lawyers and insurance companies “should respond to overzealous law enforcement agencies” and “manage threats to their livelihood and well-being both at home and abroad.”

Meyer also is scheduled to be a featured presenter the following weekend, April 20 and 21, at the 16th annual Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting at the University of California at Berkeley.

He also will speak April 5 and 6 and be part of a screening of the Wichita Eagle documentary “Unwarranted: The Senseless Death of Journalist Joan Meyer,” at the national Scholastic Press Association convention in Kansas City.