Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [113]
We did not let up on the mayor and his dealings with developers, General Motors, the Chamber of Commerce, or the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. In September 1979 we ran a front-page story outlining how public employees had contributed to his reelection campaign and done door-to-door canvassing for him on city time.
The mayor was furious and threatened to sue us for libel. He didn’t. We kept at it. He was not happy.
The city ombudsman took our findings and did his own investigation of the mayor. The city charter required him to present his findings to the mayor four days before he could release it to the public. Our sources got a copy of the confidential report—which found 100 percent of our accusations against the mayor to be correct—and we published a story in the Flint Voice saying the ombudsman had backed up our story.
The mayor accused the ombudsman of violating the city charter and asked the police department to investigate how we at the Voice got ahold of the report. We refused to cooperate and continued publishing stories about them as we entered the new year of 1980.
In May 1978, the United States Supreme Court had ruled that it was OK for police to raid a newsroom and take materials from that newsroom, with certain restrictions. Zurcher v. Stanford Daily involved a student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, and the photographs it had taken at a student demonstration where nine police officers were injured while the students occupied the campus hospital. The police wanted to see all the photos the Daily had taken in order to help them identify the students involved in the fracas. The students sued, claiming their constitutional rights were violated. The Supreme Court disagreed and said the police had the right to conduct such a search, just as long as they weren’t going on a fishing expedition.
The court’s ruling was hailed by both law enforcement and haters of the media everywhere. Journalists were appalled by it and warned that there would be abuses. They pointed out that sources would be afraid to trust newspapers if they knew that the cops could just waltz in and scoop up file cabinets full of confidential information.
Two years passed and there had been no further police raids of newsrooms anywhere across America.
Until the morning of May 15, 1980.
At 9:05 a.m., the Flint police, having obtained a search warrant from Judge Michael Dionise, raided the newspaper offices where the Flint Voice was printed and seized all materials relating to the November 1979 issue that contained the critical report of the mayor’s alleged lawbreaking—including the very printing plates used on the presses to print the Voice.
The Flint Voice was printed at the Lapeer County Press (a weekly paper in the county that was settled, in part, by my family in the 1830s). This was not the first visit by the Flint police to our printer. They had called back in November asking to be given anything the County Press had on us. The publisher, citing the First Amendment, refused. Six months later, the police showed up in person. The publisher asked if they had a search warrant. No, said the cops. Then you can’t come in, said the publisher.
A few days later they were back with the warrant in hand and took everything Flint Voice–related. They told the publisher not to disclose that they were there. The publisher complied.
Five days later, on May 20, my phone rang at the Voice office.
“Mr. Moore, this is the Flint police department,” the voice on the phone said.
The officer who called did not tell me—and I did not know—that five days prior they had raided my printer’s offices. He did tell me that they knew “exactly” the time and day that I received the ombudsman’s report—and that it appeared a crime may have been committed. He asked if the ombudsman was the leaker. I told him that was none of his business. He suggested that I tell him the truth, as he