Ruth Herbel
Appearances
Criminal
The Raid
And I was the editor of the Stanford Daily in 1971 when the Palo Alto police searched our offices.
Criminal
The Raid
Those protests coalesced into a major demonstration that took over an adjunct building at the medical school.
Criminal
The Raid
And the protesters burst out, swinging clubs, beat the officers, and escaped out the other side.
Criminal
The Raid
They'd print any photo that was newsworthy, but they said, We will not store photos so that either prosecutors or defense attorneys could use our material in court.
Criminal
The Raid
And I was met at the glass doors by one of the top editors. The first thing he said was, I couldn't do anything. They had a search warrant.
Criminal
The Raid
When I moved into the office, I could see people in, you know, the uniforms of Palo Alto police officers, although there was at least one plainclothes officer, going through the office, looking at desks and going particularly to our darkroom and looking at all of our photographs and negatives. It was an odd, I would say it was a terrible feeling, but it was just an odd feeling.
Criminal
The Raid
It's a feeling of violation. This is our space. This is our material. These are our notes. You're going through drawers. I've never been burglarized, but I imagine the sense of violation is analogous. This is our stuff that we do our work with. What are you doing here? And what gives you the right to do it?
Criminal
The Raid
We were just thinking, the courts are a way to make this kind of behavior illegal. And so we thought that was our obligation, was to make sure it didn't happen again.
Criminal
The Raid
And I followed it closely and was particularly happy with the initial district court decision, which agreed with us on our First and Fourth Amendment claims, and the Court of Appeals decision, which that essentially said, this should not be done, freedom of the press is too important.
Criminal
The Raid
If you want information from a newspaper, you send a subpoena, and the subpoena can be challenged in court. Newspapers can be searched by law enforcement. Trust is completely undermined. Trust between the newspaper and its sources. Trust between the newspaper and its readers. The newspaper becomes, in some ways, even if involuntarily, an agent of government.
Criminal
The Raid
And that is something that can never happen if a newspaper is going to have the integrity and the ability to provide information that the citizenry needs.
Criminal
The Raid
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