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Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.
Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been imprisoned in Russia for more than six months. The Russian government accused Gershkovich, a 2014 graduate of Bowdoin College, of espionage, a claim that is vigorously denied by the Wall Street Journal, President Joe Biden administration, congressional leaders and fellow journalists.
“The only thing he was doing in Russia was reporting for the Wall Street Journal,” the paper’s Washington Bureau Chief Paul Beckett told a group gathered to talk about and support Gershkovich at Bowdoin on Tuesday.
Gershkovich, whose parents fled the Soviet Union, was uniquely qualified for that job, Beckett said. Not only did he know the language, he had a deep interest in and affection for the Russian people. And, he was a fabulous writer, said Brock Clarke, a professor of English and novelist who taught Gershkovich in several workshop courses at the college.
Gershkovich chose to work in Russia — and to remain in Russia after that country’s invasion of Ukraine — when few other reporters were willing to do so, Beckett recalled. His reporting and writing opened a window to the daily lives and concerns of the Russian people. With Gershkovich now imprisoned and other reporters exiled from Russia and reporting from other countries, that perspective has been lost.
Detaining Gershkovich has achieved two likely aims for the Russian government: It has silenced a chronicler of life in Russia and the country now has a high-value hostage that it likely hopes to trade for money or Russian prisoners currently in the U.S., or both.
On the second front, the U.S. government, namely the State Department, is negotiating for Gershkovich’s release.
In a far less official way, we can all play a role in ensuring that journalists, no matter where they work, are not silenced.
I am in no way trying to draw an equivalence between Gershkovich’s unjustified and horrific imprisonment in Russia and how journalists are treated in the United States, but journalism in America is often under attack.
Threats to journalists in the U.S. are on the rise. It is no surprise. When leaders like former President Donald Trump normalize violence against reporters and undermine the credibility of journalists, his followers take note.
In Maine, Paul LePage, when he was governor, said he wanted to blow up the Portland Press Herald and shoot my colleague, editorial cartoonist George Danby. Both were later characterized as jokes, but the underlying thought that journalists are acceptable targets of violence, is not funny.
The sad thing is that many journalists are used to it. We’re ridiculed and insulted online nearly every day. Sometimes, the vitriol escalates. I, my family and my co-workers were repeatedly threatened with violence, including death, as part of an anti-Bangor Daily News campaign a decade ago that was fueled by lies told by legislative leaders and led, ironically, by a police chief.
“We don’t talk enough about the trauma many journalists endure — in large part because we are not supposed to know about it: Journalists never want to eclipse the subjects and broader themes at the heart of our stories,” Washington Post columnist Jason Rezaian wrote last year.
The fact that verbal and online threats rarely lead to actual attacks is somewhat beside the point. No profession should have to tolerate threats of violence.
And, not all the threats are hollow.
Since Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a journalist from Albion, Maine, was killed by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, in 1837, dozens of American journalists have been killed because of their work. In 2018, four journalists and a sales associate at The Capitol Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, were killed by a gunman who had a long feud with the paper and had sued the Gazette for defamation and lost. Last September, Jeff German of the Las Vegas Review-Journal was stabbed and killed outside his home. A county administrator who was upset with German’s reporting about the allegedly mismanagement of a county office has been charged with his murder.
Earlier this year, police raided the Marion County Record in Kansas. The paper’s 98-year-old owner died the next day of a heart attack that was attributed to the stress of the raid. Days later, the county attorney deemed the warrant that authorized the raid to be improper.
“Journalism is not a crime,” has become a rallying cry in the Gershkovich case. Just as he did not commit a crime in seeking out and sharing the stories of the Russian people, journalists who question elected leaders, file freedom of information requests, and ask tough questions are working to keep their communities informed. That should never be a crime — or a reason for threats or intimidation.
