Defend press freedom
Public’s knowledge dimmed by grave threats to journalists
ARussian court on Tuesday for the fifth time extended the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, a 32-year-old American journalist covering international affairs for the paper. He has spent nearly a year in jail on accusations of espionage, charges that he, the newspaper and the U.S. government vehemently deny.
His incarceration should be a national and international outrage, and speaks to the danger inherent in the important work of journalists, especially in conflict zones. It underscores why the United States must work to free him and resolutely stand up for press freedom, at home and abroad, including in the ongoing war in Gaza.
Russian authorities arrested Gershkovich on March 29, 2023, making him the first U.S. journalist since the end of the
Cold War to be imprisoned on allegations of espionage. Tuesday marked his 12th appearance in court, though prosecutors have yet to present any evidence against him.
Gershkovich’s plight speaks to the increasing hostility and danger faced by journalists doing invaluable work across the country and around the world. His reporting fostered understanding of President Vladimir Putin and the barbaric invasion of Ukraine. The world is a little less knowledgeable because of his silence.
But that’s the point. An imprisoned journalist can’t report on a paranoid autocrat’s violence and oppression. And a dead journalist will never be the world’s eyes and ears during wartime or tell difficult truths that sinister forces want to keep secret.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 78 media workers were killed while on the job in 2023, making it the deadliest year for news reporters and photographers since the organization began keeping records in 1992.
That staggering total is overwhelmingly due to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, in which 95 journalists and media workers are among the more than tens of thousands killed there in the nearly six months since the conflict began with the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas.
According to CPJ data, the dead include 90 Palestinians, two Israelis and three journalists from Lebanon. An additional 16 journalists have been injured, four are missing and 25 have been arrested.
There is always a risk inherent to conflict reporting, despite the many precautions on-the-ground reporters take to ensure their safety. But the number of dead in this conflict defies all comprehension and demands explanation, though lamentably there are fewer journalists who can ask those difficult questions.
The United States could and should do more to assert the need for combatants to protect media in conflict zones, just as the Biden administration must make it a top priority to bring home reporters such as Gershkovich and Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist and Marine veteran kidnapped in Syria 12 years ago.
Speaking at the Gridiron Club Dinner on March 16, President Joe Biden said his administration is “doing everything we can to bring Evan and Austin home and all Americans wrongly detained around the world.”
Biden also outlined the importance of journalism in an increasingly fractured, dangerous world, saying, “You’re not the enemy of the people. You are a pillar of any free society. And I may not always agree with your coverage or admire it, but I do admire your courage … Good journalism holds a mirror up to a country for us to reflect the good, the bad, the truth about who we are.”
The United States should forcefully demand that the killing and jailing of journalists must stop, but it would speak with greater moral clarity were there fewer people in American public life who use their influence to attack, threaten, demean and harass members of the media.
Those actions put journalists at risk and undermine freedom of the press, a right enshrined by the First Amendment and which serves as a beacon to journalists around the globe.
If we want a more informed world, a more knowledgeable world and a world in which the complexities of difficult situations are carefully chronicled, begin with defending that central principle of the American experiment.