WSJ’s Beckett: Gerskovich was a “natural” reporter

Freedom House spoke to the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau chief Paul Beckett about reporter Evan Gershkovich’s arrest and the increasingly dangerous environment for working journalists.

Here is an excerpt:

Freedom House: Let us start by saying how sorry we are that Evan has been targeted by the Russian regime. How are you and your colleagues doing?

Paul Beckett: Thank you. It is obviously a dark time for Evan, for his family, for his friends, and for his colleagues in the Wall Street Journal newsroom. But we are all buoyed by the support across the board—from other journalism organizations, the United States and other governments, and the public. I think everyone here realizes this is about Evan as a reporter and about the freedom of the press more broadly in a world where the repression of the media is all too common.

Evan is an accomplished journalist, having worked for Agence France Presse, the Moscow Times, and the New York Times. He joined the Wall Street Journal about a year ago. What would you like readers to know about Evan?

By all accounts, he is what we call in the business a natural: boundlessly curious, affable, independent-minded, sociable, and smart—excellent qualities in a reporter—whose ability to report on Russia was augmented by his own personal story. His parents are Soviet émigrés who fled to the United States. It was Evan’s interest in his heritage, as well as his mastery of the Russian language, that paved the way for him to do such excellent work there.

Read more here.