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An Attack on Free Press

UPDATED

Arizona Republic: Sheriff’s deputies arrest ‘New Times’ owners. The charges stem from a story published under their byline in the Thursday edition of New Times, in which they describe a subpoena the paper reportedly received from a grand jury convened by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Lacey has been released from jail after posting bail; there’s no jail record available on the status of Larkin. Efforts to reach them Friday have been unsuccessful. Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the two wondered in the opening paragraphs of the article whether they could face legal repercussions for making the subpoena public, but they viewed the subpoena as an attack on freedom of the press.

The subpoena was reported here, and it’s a beyond-broad demand for information, not only about how the journalists are doing their work but also about the people reading it. If the facts are what the New Times reports, the word “outrageous” is far too mild to describe what the prosecutor is doing.

UPDATE: The charges were dropped and the prosecutor dismissed.

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