the imperiled voices

of journalists worldwide

Wall Street Journal’s, Evan Gershkovich, is now under arrest in Yekaterinburg east of Moscow for allegedly engaging in es espionage. A first generation American born to Russian emigres, he is a seasoned Russian speaker with several years’ experience reporting in the Federation. In the twenty-first century, journalists face tremendous physical danger and virtually on-going monitoring by authoritarian governments in China and Russia but incarceration is a step beyond. In Putin’s paranoid state, one should fully expect Gershkovich to receive a tough sentence with these charges, probably the two decades’ maximum punishment for the crime.

Just last week the United States arrested a Russian with several crimes under statues relating to working for a foreign power. Coincidence the Gershkovich arrest happened this week? Absolutely not.

Putin’s interest in Gershkovich is only indirectly espionage. Sure, the Russians are unhappy about any non-Russians digging into their affairs. But, all countries spy on each other, often through government officials stationed abroad. No country is ecstatic about outsiders discovering, then revelaing their deepest secrets. Gershkovich is a seasoed journalist speaking the language and with years on the ground in country. He could be revealing items russians don’t want shown but it’s far more likely this is a bigger game underway.

A major difference between Russia (and the PRC for that matter) and the west is the true independence of journalists here. They are not part of the state apparatus, often criticising it. As we know, President Trump regularly accuses the press of not fulfilling what he apparently sees as their constitutional responsibility to report only favourable news about the White House while journalists have proven year after year far more interested in stories of malfeasance, intrigue, policy choices, and anything else based on the story rather than who is in power. In authoritarian systems, there is much of a state media to shed good light on the rulers, depending on the particular configuration of any state’s media apparatus. Ours is independent while Russia’s toes the line to satisfy Vlad the Impaler.

Russia is, instead, focuses on finding interantional leverage with this action. Putin clearly doesn’t like the west and is a strident Slavic nationalist so he doesn’t trust a Wall Street Journal reporter but this is a move to give him someone he can exchange for genuine spies arrested in the United States or western Europe. Gershkovich is a pawn.

Putin assumes other governments must be doing the same as he does so they must have sent spies under journalist cover. Oh, he assumes everyone sends people overseas to spy precisely as precisely the same way.

Many critics savaged the Biden administration for exchanging the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for Britany Griner, the U.S. women’s basketballer, late in 2022. Biden was unsuccessful at freeing former Marine Paul Whelan, thus continuing his four year detention. Griner being African-American heritage and lesbian might have informed some critics views but most analysts in the United States thought Putin got precisely what he wanted with surrendering Griner for the extremely-well connected Bout. A long time international arms entrepeneur, the United States in 2011 tried and convicted Bout following capture and extradiction during a U.S.-organised sting operation in Thailand in 2008. Griner’s incarceration on drug issues was a cause celebre in the United States but Whelan, portrayed as spying in conjunction with being in Moscow for a wedding, has remained relatively off-the-radar to anyone except experts. Where will Gershkovich be on the scale of attention or forgotten? Most likely with some attention as a Journal reporter about whom the paper can remind listeners regularly.

Whelan received a sixteen year sentence following conviction for spying, an extremely common ruse dictatorships use to hold peole. Whelan gives Putin another possible chip in case he needs it in this perverse international games occurring even today between nation-states.

It is possible Whelan and Gershkovich are indeed spies but unlikely. There is no definitvie proof except Russia’s word. Putin’s maniacal need for control without any scrutiny, much as any other rank and file authoritarian does, continues hiding kinks in his armour he does not want to show at home.

One occasionally hears the phrase ‘democracy dies without light’. Journalists work to create the light showing on how governments large and small as well as societies as a whole function, among many possible personal objectives. In the past two decades, we continue seeing deteriorating conditions for journalists, resulting in increased vulnerability and death for doing their craft. Journalists are humans, too, but work to provide others with evidence of what is going on in our world.

We desperately need them, even if we don’t always like what they find. Democracy thrives on having accountability while authoritarians often fall because of that lack of openness or accountability. We condemn Putin’s actions and those of the many other governments persecuting journalists but we have work to do at home as well where too many journalists are underappreciated in the service they provide all of us.FIN