No newspaper wants to be the center of any article they’re working on, but the Marion County Record, the longtime newspaper for the Kansas town of about 1900 people, ended up with one for all time when local police raided their offices and the homes of some of its staff in the fall of 2023 without justification in a clear violation of the First Amendment. Editor-in-chief Eric Meyer was right when he told the police who forced their way inside his home that it would be a major story as they rifled around his house for hard drives, but even he had no idea how when his 97-year-old mother, the longtime owner of the paper, went into cardiac arrest from the stress of the day before, making it a headline the world over. Meyer was the first to publish even when the paper lacked any of its usual equipment and nerves were shaken by being confronted by armed officers, and if anything, “Seized,” Sharon Liese’s enormously entertaining and insightful documentary about the raid’s aftermath, isn’t just about one day for the Record or the reach it can have, but the commitment to cover a community on a daily basis that remains and honorable and highly imperiled calling.
“Seized” actively demonstrates the value of the kind of enterprise reporting that Meyer and his staff have long practiced, sticking around long enough to tell a far more nuanced and complicated story than what could be initially published. As Liese learns over the course of three years’ worth of her own diligence, the raid in Marion might’ve been a flagrant violation of the law, but one the local sheriff could reasonably assume might not face blowback in the town where a disconnect exists between the Marion Record and the community it serves. While Meyer’s devotion to covering council meetings and digging deeper into public records led to a nationally recognized and prizewinning publication, the lowered expectations of what journalism should be had some locals taking issue with any serious reporting that Meyer might assign as well as his salty op-eds that could be considered unduly critical.
Perhaps a paper that’s still folded by the same staff that wrote the articles, fresh from the printers, is a bit quaint in these times, as Finn, a newly hired reporter who hails from New York, seems to think when he arrives, but as “Seized” observes him picking up the basics of shoe leather reporting at local events, along with Meyer pursuing a lawsuit against Marion for damages from the raid, it shows all that would be lost and swept under the rug by bad actors if such news organizations are forced out of business in one way or another or pressured to simply pass along what the powerful would like. The depth of Liese’s own efforts to convey what happened yields both a portrait of a small town that’s far more interesting than most national media coverage would ever acknowledge and a unique view of this moment in time for everyone in the U.S. that treasures a free press and as the film makes its premiere at Sundance this week, the director generously took the time to talk about finding such an important story in her own backyard, reaching out to subjects that she knew already were skeptical of anyone with a notepad and recorder and finding people in all sides of the situation equal air.
How did this come about?
I live in Kansas, about two hours away from Marion and I heard about [the raid]. It’s not my typical type of film because I usually go into something very intimate like transgender youth or immigration, but the themes are big. [Still] I would start with the people and this was a story that started with the people, but the story was in the national spotlight. So I was a little hesitant at first, but it was so close to home and it was such a huge, unbelievably shocking story that I thought, “Maybe I should just drive there.” So I drove to Marion and all of their electronic equipment had been seized, so I wasn’t yet competing with other filmmakers because no one could really get through to them and I had the advantage of being able to drive there. I waited online to talk to Eric and he, being the tried and true journalist that he is, said, “You’re the first documentary filmmaker here. I’ll give you a shot.”
Unbelievable. While he may have been accepting, what’s it like to enter an environment like this with a camera and asking questions after what happened?
Eric, as you could probably tell in the film, loves to talk and talk about this story [in particular]. He wants it out there. So there was never an issue with [it], except when it was on production day and they were trying to get a paper out. The first time I got there, I did not bring a camera, which I typically do when I first meet someone and ask them to let me film them. But I was sitting there and then Jessica McMaster, [a reporter from Kansas City] who you see in the film, had been waiting and waiting. And I [thought], while I was talking to [Eric], you need to do an interview. He was doing different interviews in between our conversation. So [Jessica] started talking to him and I said, “Do you guys mind if I use my iPhone?” Some of that is actually in the film and I just shot on my iPhone. He was pretty available [in general] and an open book. Other people in the town, as you can imagine, took a little longer.
You structure the film in such a way where it moves back and forward in time to really give everyone a fair shake, as far as seeing where grievances were. Was it difficult to figure out how to tell this story?
That was one of the most challenging things about this film because we had all this incredible, body cam and surveillance footage [of the raid], which was like a multi-cam shoot. And we knew we wanted to get into it with that, but then we had Finn coming in [as a reporter for the Marion County Record] a year later. We didn’t know who was going to appear. And thank God it was Finn from New York City, this bright-eyed college grad. Once he came in, I felt we want to start the story through his eyes because he’s like the avatar for the viewer. He’s going to be experiencing it the way it unfolded in real time. And [the raid] was so confusing and inexplicable that how it happened that he was a good way into [this as] an outsider coming in and not just trying to find out what happened in the raids, but also to understand the tensions that existed between the community and the newspaper.
To go back to the raid, did you know all that surveillance footage was available? Not only from the police body cams, but from inside Eric’s home and offices?
Eric started putting some of that out there in the world, and I was like, “Whoa, what is all this?” Then I was able to get the surveillance footage from him. The bodycam footage was starting to come out as the lawyer started working on [the case] and making FOIA requests for the body cam footage. Our producer Paul Matyasovsky put together a timeline with the seven cameras plus the four surveillance cameras, so we have everything all lined up where they were because they were also in different locations. All of it was just right there and [the raid] can just be told in real time on those in verite and those from that footage.
As you said, you usually start with the micro and go macro. What was it like thinking about this in reverse?
As I think people will kind of have the experience when they see the film, it’s not exactly what you think it’s going to be. You think it’s just going to be about the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and Privacy Protection Act being violated. That’s what I thought the film was going to be about when I started. But then I met the people and saw the really human side of what was going on, which is usually where I like to dwell, and I felt all that needs to come out and needs to be part of it. But we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that there was something very egregious that happened and that democracy is under attack in this country. As Eric says at the end, “This is the first shot” because when I first went into this two-and-a-half years ago, I thought it was a canary in a coal mine story, but now look what is starting to happen. Two-and- a-half years later, this is happening.
Was there anything that happened that changed your ideas about this?
It’s important for us to realize that whatever political beliefs you have, your group is not the only group that believes in and wants to maintain the integrity of the First Amendment. Because everybody believes that. Nobody was saying, “Oh, we should throw out the constitution.” It’s just where you’re coming from and what perspective you’re taking. So I think there are blind spots and we need more conversation to talk about how we can have a common understanding of what these amendments really mean and what does freedom of the press really mean and try to not interpret it based on who you like and who you don’t like.
There’s a scene towards the end where you bring together some members of the community you don’t expect to see sharing a room together and make it clear it was facilitated by the film. It’s a great moment, but were you worried at all about asserting yourself in the situation?
It’s funny because we were tempted to insert ourselves more because we were inserted. We were tempted to show how much we had become inserted into the story. I could be in Eric’s office and hear the police scanner going off, [saying] “Documentary crew’s here again,” you know? So like everybody knew when we were there. And then we were invited on the podcast [that Mayor Mike Powers starts]. They wanted to hear what we’re doing and why we find this so interesting. So we were already in it, and we knew that we were waiting for [these two people] to have a conversation and each side would say something like, “Yeah, maybe we should have a coffee,” or “I could see it happening,” so I just asked each one individually, would you sit down [together] and do an interview?” They each took a little bit of time to think about it and then they came back and said “Yes.” Then we wanted to be transparent with the viewers because it wasn’t like this just happened. We didn’t want to set it up in a coffee shop where you walk in and go, “Oh, they’re having coffee together.” They wanted a neutral ground, so we chose the school auditorium and they sat down.
It ends up being really moving that the movie could open that kind of conversation. What’s it like getting ready to start more at Sundance?
It’s been exhausting to finish it, but it’s exhilarating knowing what’s to come. I’m really looking forward to it and it was always the hope that we would have it at Sundance. But you get that call and you’re like, “Wow, okay, we’re going.”
”Seized” will screen again at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27th at 9:30 pm at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City, January 29th at 8:30 am at the Library Center Theater and January 31st at 2:30 pm at the Redstone Megaplex. It will also be available to stream from January 29th through February 1st via the Sundance virtual platform.