Editor receives free speech award

The Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications honored Record editor Eric Meyer last week with its 2025 Free Speech Award for “resilience and commitment to local journalism following an unprecedented police raid on his newsroom and family home.”

“The case of the Marion County Record has become a powerful example of how abuse of the legal system and due process can threaten the First Amendment,” center director Roy Gutterman said. “The trauma experienced by the Meyer family and the people of Marion County, Kansas, needs to be recognized.”

Each year, the Tully Center honors a journalist who has faced extraordinary pressure in the course of reporting the news. Past recipients have included Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa and other journalists who have “stood firm in the face of threats to press freedom.”

The center described the raid on the Record as “a significant case study in press freedom, due process, and the vulnerabilities faced by community newsrooms.”

Meyer received the award at ceremonies in Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium and spoke to classes and journalism professors at Syracuse, one of the nation’s premier journalism schools, during a three-day visit to the Syracuse campus in upstate New York.