The Press Box - One Year Without Evan Gershkovich With Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Hello media consumers! Bryan speaks with Emma Tucker, the Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief, on the anniversary of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich's imprisonment in Russia, the type of reporter he is, the charges against him, and more. (3:28). Then, Bryan gives some brief thoughts on the Ronna McDaniel–NBC News affair (20:57). Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Emma Tucker Producers: Eduardo Ocampo and Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever wondered about the meaning behind your favorite song lyric or why certain melodies make your skin tingle? I'm Cole Kushner and these are the kinds of questions I try to answer on Dissect, a podcast that dives deep into one album per season examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. I've dissected full albums by Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Tyro the Creator, Beyonce, Kanye, and more. Our latest season just launched all about MF Doom's Mad Villany. Listen to Dissect wherever you get your podcast because great art deserves more than a swipe. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producers Brian Waters and Eduardo Ocampo. I would like to welcome you to a special episode of the press box devoted to

Evan Gershkevich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested one year ago Friday in Russia and remains in prison. This is a podcast I wanted to do for two reasons. One, because this is a story we should be thinking about more, a lot more. And two, it's a unique story and that it makes journalists who are used to having agency in their lives feel somewhat helpless. In just one second, we're going to bring on Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker. But first, a little background on the Gershkevich story. Evan Gershkovich is 32 years old. He grew up in New Jersey.

His parents were Russian immigrants who moved to the United States in the 70s. Evan and his parents spoke Russian growing up, something that would help him later in his reporting career. Gershkovich worked at the New York Times, and then he moved to Moshevich. where he worked for multiple outlets before landing at the journal two years ago. Evan saw his reporting in Russia in a very particular way. As Time Magazine noted, Gershkovich wanted to, quote, depict in its full complexity, a country that is often reduced to caricature.

Well, the country that Gershkovich was trying to rescue from caricature wound up arresting it on March 29th of last year. He was doing some reporting on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. the charge against him was espionage. You don't need me to tell you that a charge is outrageous, but it's also different because not since the 1980s had an American journalist been arrested for espionage in Russia.

And I came back to a line that Polina Ivanova, one of Evans' friends who covers Russia for the Financial Times, gave to Time magazine. She said it wasn't that Evans' work had changed, it was that Russia changed. So now Evan Gershkovich has been in prison for a year. It's important to say that he has not been tried. Evidence has not been presented of his alleged guilt.

There's been talk of prisoner swaps between the United States and Russia, but nothing has come of that yet. So that's where the story is stuck. And as I mentioned at the top journalists, we journalists are used to having some kind of agency in our jobs. We see somebody doing something outrageous and we write about it. we bring that behavior to readers' attention. So what can we do in this case when the person we're writing about is Vladimir Putin,

who is beyond the reach of news articles or angry editorials? The best answer to that question I can give you anyway is to learn more about Evan Gershkovich, keep talking about his arrest, and to find out what's being done to bring him home. Here's Emma Tucker. All right, Emma, I'd love to start here. What kind of reporter is Evan Gershkevich? A very good one. He's reading his reports that he did for the Wall Street Journal as part of a 24-hour read-a-thon.

And I kicked it off, and I was reminded as I was reading this sort of epic piece that he wrote about, the Russian economy. Quite what a good reporter he is. I mean, he has the huge advantage of being thoroughly fluent, bilingual in Russian. He also knows the country very well. He's a, he's a very friendly person. He's a kind of person people want to talk to. So, yeah, he's a kind of a dream reporter. Time Magazine had a good line.

They said Evan was trying to depict in its full complexity, a country that is often reduced to caricature. How did that come through in his writing? Oh, that's such a good point for them to make. I mean, you know, Russia is so much more than, you know, Siberia and vodka and old-style Soviet Union, whatever. People have, they're absolutely right, though, these caricatures. He was, he was very interested in the culture of Russia.

Obviously, he's brought up by Russian parents in the US. So he was, he's fascinated by the people, I think. I wouldn't say he was starry-eyed about Russia at all. I think, you know, he's very, sort of very level-headed about it. But at the same time, very interested in the culture, very interested in the people, very interested in the geography, even. So I think that was one of his great strengths was he didn't reduce, he didn't reduce Russia to a caricature. Evan was arrested March 29th of last year.

What were your first indications that something was wrong? First indication was I was alerted to the fact that he hadn't checked in for his, I think it was the midday check-in. So when we send reporters to dangerous parts of the world, we have a system operating. by our security people whereby people who are there have to check in three times a day, and he missed his midday check-in. Now, when I was told about this, I wasn't too alarmed because people run out of battery, they don't have Wi-Fi, they might be busy, you know, there are plenty of reasons why somebody might have missed a check-in.

It's never a good sign, but, you know, I wasn't unduly alarmed. A few hours later, I saw the managing editor walking across the office towards my office, and I just knew she was coming to tell me that Evan had missed his second check-in. And indeed she was. And at that point, you know, I think at that point we'd also heard that somebody had been arrested in a restaurant in the area where we knew Evan was reporting. That obviously raised alarm bells, but it was all very speculative. I went home, I went to bed, I left my phone on. I said to the managing editor, if it's bad news, call me.

At 4 o'clock in the morning, my phone rang. And I remember waking up and just thinking this is going to be bad news. And it was. It was that he'd been arrested and charged with espionage, which is never a good thing if you're operating in Russia. What was the next 24 hours like? The next 24 hours were a complete whirlwind. We were – well, there were two priorities. Number one was making sure his parents were kept fully informed of what was going on.

and my manager-editor was on the phone to them every hour. It's a difficult thing because the other priority was trying to find out what the hell was going on. It was very, very difficult, you know, information out of Russia, hard to come by. We were getting reports of this arrest that had taken place in this restaurant. Various of his friends had gone by to see if they could, you know, find out where he was. I mean, it was a sort of slightly chaotic wild wind. So as well as the parents, I felt that I needed to make sure that we were very transparent with the newsroom.

So we sent out a letter to them. I had phone calls coming in from all over. Our man in D.C., Paul Beckett, he got onto the official channels very quickly, which was hugely helpful. So it was really a kind of wild story. of, you know, the newsroom, the parents, the White House, you know, all the official channels are trying to make sense of what the hell was going on. Over the year that he's been in prison, what sense have you gotten about why Evan would be

targeted for arrest as opposed to anybody else? It's very, very difficult to tell. I mean, the charges against him are totally bogus. So I think Evan is a victim of so-called hostage diplomacy. He is. has been picked up to be used as currency in a possible prisoner swap. I don't think, I think perhaps the fact that he's American might be a factor. I think the fact that he's possibly works for the Wall Street Journal, a big, well-known brand. But honestly, I don't know. None of us know. Only Vladimir Putin and his henchmen know why Evan has been picked up like this. I love to talk to you about what the journal has done over the last year. In some cases when someone's

arrested in a foreign country, you're advised not to say anything, not to draw any attention to it. But after Evan's arrest, you were on television very, very quickly. What was your thinking there? It was a combination of instinct. I was appalled and outraged at this. You know, Evan, Evan was not a sort of, he had not gone off peace. He was accredited with the Russian foreign ministry. He was doing everything by the book. So partly it was a sense of outrage. But I should add as well that the advice we got from the American government was make noise, make some noise about this. So we did. And we haven't stopped. And the noise is intended to be heard by the Russians, by the US administration, by whom? Yeah, I think it's just a generally,

and really good way to keep the pressure up all around on both sides. And also, to be honest, it really helps his parents to know, I think, you know, that they're, because for them, their life's in limbo. And, I mean, that's not why we're doing it. We're doing it because that was the advice we've gotten. It does keep the pressure up. But they've been wonderful and very supportive and very helpful in drawing attention to their son's terrible situation.

His parents are Michaela, who you mentioned had immigrated from Russia to the United States in the 70s. What have you observed about them over the last year? Unbelievable stuicism. They're like a walking definition of what stoical looks like. They are, but that's not to say they're not suffering. They are. They're suffering terribly. But they're very brave people.

They don't make any fuss. they are they they've put on a very brave face from the word go but i know how difficult it's been for them incredibly hard and you know the only only good thing good thing to come out of all of this awful business with evans arrest is that we've got to know his parents and they're wonderful people and his sister daniel as well she had a nice piece in the philadelphia inquire today talking about her brother evans being held in leffatovo prison which is known for keeping detainees and solitary confinement and for interrogations. What do you know about his day-to-day life there? We know that he's, as you say, he's kept in a small cell. He has a cellmate. He is allowed out

one hour for every 24. He is reading Russian classics. He's writing a lot of letters. He's also receiving a lot of letters. He's meditating. He's doing what exercise he can. He sees his Russian lawyers on a regular basis, and he's had sporadic visits from the U.S. ambassador in Moscow. But, you know, even for someone as resilient as Evan, it's a pretty tough, tough set of circumstances. And he can exchange letters with the outside world in Russian? That's correct. So he can write letters in Russian. We receive them here. They get translated. Then if people want to write to him, they can either write obviously in Russian or in English, get it translated. Everything passes through the prison censor, though, which is no surprise. What kinds of things are you sending him? Oh, I think people, I mean, I've written to him twice. I think people in the newsroom, his friends, they're writing to let him know.

what's going on. I mean, I think that it's all very personal. I know that one, he from prison arranged to have flowers sent to his sister on International Women's Day. He's very thoughtful like that. He gets in touch with his friends and says, you know, send this to my mom or whatever. So he's been playing chess with his dad via letter. Sometimes the letters get out of sync, which can get a little complicated. We've seen these brief images of Evan in Russian courtrooms, including this week where he's wearing a Czech shirt and he's smiling.

What do you allow yourself to glean from those appearances? Well, it's obviously reassuring to see that he's in, he looks okay. He's in, apparently his spirits are okay. It's obviously reassuring for all of us to see that. But that doesn't in any way detract from the fact that he shouldn't be there. A year is, you know, is a year too long. However, you know, he's the kind of guy. I mean, I don't know him terribly well.

I only met him once, but I got the impression that he's, you know, like his parents, he's a stoic. I think a lot of his, what he does is he's conscious of the fact that his friends and family will be seeing these images. So perhaps he's putting on a good show to help the people who love him. Every so often, Vladimir Putin's tossed out this idea that he's. he might release Gershkovich at some indistinct point in the future? How much stock do you put in those pronouncements? It's really very difficult to know.

I mean, we're dealing with Vladimir Putin, so we can only speculate. I think it was encouraging for us when Putin first talked publicly about Evan because it indicated at least that this is on his radar screen. But, you know, it's terribly, there's many a slip twixt cup and lip. You know, what might happen now when there might be a deal, it's really difficult for us to tell. But it was at least encouraging, I think, for us to know that, to hear him being spoken about publicly from the person who holds the key to his release. Evans' arrest happened just months after you'd started as editor-in-chief of the journal, and you were at the Sunday Times in London before that. Did you ever encounter anything like this with reporters in the past?

Yes, I did. When, well, when I was at the Times of London, two of our reporters got picked up in Syria. They were, I remember it was absolutely horrific. They were arrested. They went missing. It was the same thing. You know, they didn't check in. But their ordeal, which was brutal and violent, it involved one of the reporters being shot in the foot and then being tied up and put in the back of a car.

I mean, it was horrific. But it was over very quickly. It was very traumatic for them, but it was over. And then also while I was at the Times, Marie Colvin, who was reporting from Syria for the Sunday Times, she died doing her job. She was murdered. She was killed. To this day, it's assumed that the Syrian regime targeted her. And that was pretty horrific.

So, yeah, this was grim. And now you have people reporting for the journal all over the globe, many of them in dangerous. places. As editor, how do you feel when something like this happened? It's the worst, it's just horrific. Because obviously, their safety, the safety of our reporters is a priority. It comes first. But journalism is a different. It's a dangerous job. You know, things happen. And, you know, at the moment we're obviously prioritizing safety, we have to. But we also understand that we have a commitment. as a powerful news brand to be on the ground reporting those eyewitness accounts can't be replicated.

They're hugely valuable. And we will never, ever step away from that commitment. However, the safety of our journalists has to come first. So we're constantly looking at the risk of sending people to different places and having to make these very difficult judgments. Journal continues to cover Russia, including its war with Ukraine, its invasion, of Ukraine. Is this a case where the paper has to put its job in its heart in different places, or does Evans' arrest inform the way you cover that country? We separate our news gathering from our hearts. We have to. That's our job. We have done some

very extensive reporting about what's going on. I refer you to a piece that came out this week about the hostage diplomacy and the way it's been turned into this thing that the world has to contend with. But it's tricky because, you know, our job is to report the news. One of our reporters is being held hostage in Russia. It makes it difficult, but we have to try and separate the two. Do you think of Evan as a political prisoner? Listen, he's got caught up in this horrible, so-called hostage diplomacy, which a term I hate, because there's nothing diplomatic about snatching a journalist off the street while he's doing his job. He's a victim of this.

He's a victim in this geopolitical tip-for-tat. He's been taken. He's being used as currency. If that makes him a political prisoner, then yes. Alexei Navalny, who was a critic of Vladimir Putin, died last month in our country. Russian prison for the people who are worried about Evan and his safety and his continued imprisonment, how was that greeted inside the journal? Well, the thing is, everything that happens in Russia now, including the death of Navalny,

we see it through the prism of how is this going to impact Evan? It's human instinct. So Navalny, the terror attack, developments in the Ukraine war, you know, obviously we cover these things as journalists, but, you know, you can't help. but think, how might this impact Evan? I think that's just a human instinct. In my introduction, Emma, I said that we journalists love to feel that we have agency. We can write, we can report, sometimes we can even affect change.

We're doing that in this case about Evan, but Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime is sitting on the other side of the table. So what would you say that journalists who want to at least imagine they have some sense of agency, what can we do in this case? Well, I think stay fully committed to independent reporting. I mean, it's very difficult. And obviously, since the terror attack in Moscow the other day, Putin's clamping down even harder internally. So forget foreign journalists.

There's very little independent reporting taking place in Russia at all. But I think as journalists for brands or for news titles outside Russia, we should stay committed to reporting as much as we can, to picking up those independent voices, to trying to tell the story of what's really going on in Russia. I think that's one thing. And then on the other hand, and people have been fantastic, other journalists have been so supportive of our efforts to keep Evan in the news.

That's something that everyone can do, and we are enormously grateful for that support. Last question for you. Have you allowed yourself to think about what it would be like when Evan came back home? Very occasionally, I allow myself to think that. It's, again, I spoke to Evan's parents about this, and, you know, I asked them that question, and they said, they were very upfront. They said, oh, yeah, we think about it all the time. They've got a plan for when he comes out. So, yes, yes, I do allow myself to think about it. But then I usually come back to a reality. the bump. Emma Tucker, thank you so much for coming on the press box. Thank you for having me. All right, before we go, I wanted to freestyle some thoughts for you on the Ronna McDaniel

NBC News Affair, which we can call Rana Muck. Help Me, colon, Rana. We're still workshopping that here at Pressbox headquarters. If you didn't see this, NBC hired Ronna McDaniel, who is the recently defenestrated head of the RNC, who was a supporter of Donald Trump's attempts to steal the 2020 election as a contributor, as a Republican contributor, a nominally pro-Trump voice. Well, the people who actually host television shows for MSNBC went crazy. He said, you know, we stand for the whole truth and not lying part of the media.

And then NBC unhired Ronna McDaniel. So I got four thoughts for you on that. Number one, we've talked a lot about newsroom reckonings on this podcast. I'm not sure I've ever seen a cable news primetime reckoning quite like this, where every host on MSNBC starting with Joe and Mika in the morning to Lawrence O'Donnell at night went on the air and said, our bosses have made a terrible mistake. I think I read that Rachel Maddow used 30 minutes of her show to talk. talk about Ronna McDaniel.

Rachel Maddow was on the air for an hour a week and 30 minutes of it was devoted to an HR issue at NBC. That's how you know you've screwed up if you're the network. Even Chuck Todd came on Meet the Press. Welcome to the resistance. Chuck Todd. That's thought number one. Thought number two is when you hire somebody like Ronna McDaniel, what did NBC News think

they were going to get out of it? What was the best case scenario? of her appearing on Meet the Press and perhaps on election night and I guess on MSNBC, though, the host there said that that was not going to happen under any circumstances. So you're stepping into this minefield to use an only in journalism term. And you're thinking, what do we get? What's the best thing? What viewer is going to watch NBC News?

What kind of texture? What kind of information are we going to give people that they couldn't other way? get from our outlets. Thought number three came from a story by Max Taney and Semaphore. I thought Max made an excellent point when he said hiring Rona McDaniel is evidence that the news networks think Donald Trump is going to win the election or they think there's a very good chance Donald Trump is going to win the election. And they're already thinking about their outreaches to Trump world. Can we have an ambassador? Which brings me to thought number four. which is that the networks, as David and I have discussed, do not know how to do this.

They still don't. We talked about how they were showing full Trump speeches back in 2016, and then they said, oh, no, no, that's a bad idea. And now we're back to showing Trump speeches again. In the case of Rona McDaniel, we've now gone back to the era where Jeffrey Lord was a pro-Trump punded on CNN. Now, when I say they don't know how to do it, maybe I should correct the pronoun there. Because the they in this case is the executives.

I think the people on air at MSNBC at CNN, I think they figured out how to do this. I think they think, look, we're going to rely on our instincts. We're going to rely on our hosts. We're going to have conservative voices on our air, mostly never Trumpers. But we cannot do the normal cable news. Here's a voice from the left. here's a voice from the right thing right now. We just can't do it.

The problem is their bosses are still trying to do it. And that explains the hiring and then the firing, or letting go of Ronna McDaniel. All right, that is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters and Eduardo Ocampo. Thank you, Eduardo. A couple things to put on your agenda here.

Number one, I've got a new piece up at the ringer.com on Iron Eagle. Ian Eagle, the fine basketball announcer who works for CBS and Turner, who is going to be announcing the final four at the end of the NCAA men's tournament. Ion Eagle has always been a fascinating person to me, partly because his parents were show business people. We're used to, in announcing these days, meeting a new announcer whose parents were announcers, right? They were raised in a broadcast booth. Ian Eagle was raised in the stages of nightclubs by a dad who was a comedian, a Catskills comedian, a mom who was a singer who would later become a Judy Garland impersonator in Las Vegas.

And to me, when you understand who Ian's parents were, when you understand what his childhood would like, those things he says on the air during a basketball game, the jokes he makes, the way you can almost hear that after it gets off a line, it all makes sense. Anyway, check that out. It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, Ion Eagle. It's on the ringer.com right now. Announcement number two is that we're done

with the March Thursday press box schedule. I've got three quarters of next month's guest hosts lined up. We'll hopefully put that schedule on Twitter at the press box pod next week. But I can tell you that next Thursday, my pal, your pal, everybody's pal Amanda Dobbins is going to be my guest host. And among many other things, we're going to talk about this new Netflix movie Scoop. Now, this is not the Evil and Wa Scoop, the book that many a journalist and many a foreign correspondent had under their arms for years and years.

Now, this is a scoop about the women at the BBC who got Prince Andrew to sit down for a TV interview, a very memorable and disastrous TV interview. I cannot wait to talk to Amanda about that and about the mythology of television interviews, those climactic interviews we used to see all the time with Barbara Walters. Monday on this program, David Shoemaker is going to be back.

From vacation, he is back, and you know we're going to have more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic week.