Viewers were transported more than 1,600 miles from the Island to the rural community of Marion, Kan., on Saturday night during the screening of the documentary “Seized” at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center.
The documentary investigates the 2023 raids of the town’s local newspaper, the Marion County Record, and the home of the publisher and co-owner, mother and son Eric and Joan Meyer. During the raids, Marion County Police seized several cell phones belonging to reporters and computers containing sensitive information, including content about the town’s police chief. The documentary begins one year after the raids with Finn Hartnett, a newly hired reporter, during his first day of work at the Record. New to the community, Finn is left making sense of the raids’ aftermath as he covers local issues, including the paper’s ongoing litigation with city officials involved in the raid.
The screening was part of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society’s 12th annual Documentary Week, which showcases new films, followed by moderated discussions with film subjects and directors.
Following the screening of “Seized,” director Sharon Liese discussed her documentary with Charles Sennott, publisher of The Martha’s Vineyard Times. The pair took questions from an audience of 155 people as well.
Liese, who lived two hours away from Marion, and first learned about the raids from listening to NPR, said that she was surprised to learn about the community’s animosity toward the newspaper.
“I thought I would go there and that the whole town would be outraged that this happened to their newspaper. When I got there and found out that half the people were and half the other people were not, that just shocked me, and I wanted to dig deeper into that,” Liese said. “A part of it seems to be, ‘If I don’t like you, then what I think about the First Amendment may change a little bit.’”
Liese told The Times about her persistence in persuading town officials to participate in the documentary during the film’s more than two years in production. “The thing about documentary that’s different than news is that you have more time. Over 2½ years, we were able to be there consistently, talk to people, ask them many times if they would talk to us, and meet with them without cameras,” Liese said.
For example, she said, Marion Mayor Michael Powers admired one of the documentary’s producers for his work on the reality show “Wicked Tuna.” “He wanted all the ins and outs about that show. So they went and had a conversation. Once [city officials] learned that we really did want to tell the other side of the story, and that we wanted to hear what they had to say, they started talking,” Liese said. “Once the mayor told them, ‘I trust these guys,’ then they started talking.”
Liese also highlighted how the documentary balanced the heaviness of the raids’ unconstitutional nature and the death of the newspaper’s 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer, the day after the raids with the amusing personalities of Marion’s inhabitants.
“It was really important for us to include the humor and the color of the characters that we met in Marion,” Liese said. “We also didn’t want to be laughing at anyone. We just wanted to be able to laugh, and we also wanted to pay respect to the people in the town, and to Eric’s mother, who died, and also not take away from the seriousness of the violation of the First and Fourth Amendments.”
Sennott underscored that 2.5 newspapers close in the U.S. every week, and urged the audience to support local journalism. “Local journalism in America is in a deep crisis. This film lands at a time that we all have to think about this crisis … this is about a time-honored and deeply cherished tradition of our democracy, to have local newspapers that can bring you sets of facts around which we can come together and try to solve the challenges we face. [The raids] were a unique attack, but small newsrooms all over the country are struggling every week,” Sennott said. “I think it really is super-important to support your local newspaper, to understand the battle that’s out there.”
