Bloomberg broke Gershkovich embargo

Bloomberg News broke the embargo of the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who had been in a Russian prison, reports Charlotte Klein of New York Magazine.

Klein reports, “According to multiple sources at the Journal and other major outlets, the Bloomberg scoop left journalists and government officials fuming. With a prisoner swap, you don’t know if it’s going to happen until it happens. (As one Journal reporter put it: ‘We literally had Yaroslav Trofimov on the ground with binoculars waiting to see Evan come off the plane, and we pubbed as soon as that happened.’) Which means that Bloomberg’s story proclaiming Gershkovich was free was inaccurate, given that the Russian plane was still in the air at the time of publication. That plane could have just turned around and gone back to Moscow, which is why the Journal and other publications had agreed to hold off.

“‘Incensed’ is how one reporter, whose outlet had agreed to an embargo – delaying publishing what they knew – reacted to Bloomberg’s decision. ‘People are very, very disappointed in Bloomberg. And not just the embargo breaking, but the football spiking.’ (The Bloomberg editor’s X post was later deleted.) Another reporter added, ‘We all want to break stories. We also need to consider the risks of breaking those stories. I hope editors and reporters thought long and hard about the risks of revealing the details of a hostage transfer before the hostages were back in U.S. custody.'”

Read more here.