Could a Reporter’s Detention Make the WSJ Rethink Anything?
When it’s this personal, will the Wall Street Journal editorial board keep supporting the ways of authoritarians?
Given that we are daily hoping for hostages to be released, this seems an appropriate time to discuss Russia’s holding of journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Might the bogus arrest and ongoing imprisonment of Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was covering the war in Ukraine from Russia and who has now been held for more than 8 months, affect how the Wall Street Journal editorial board opines on authoritarianism abroad — and here at home?
More specifically, will Russia holding one of their reporters hostage (now at least until the end of January 2024) affect the Murdoch-owned paper’s editorial positions on despot-wannabe politicians and their devoted followers, like Donald Trump and his dangerous cult of personality?
Okay, yes, I’m only dreaming here. But as a father and grandfather — and fan of representational democracy, even our skewed and regularly disappointing one — I have to.
Gershkovich, journalist, and U.S. citizen, was arrested by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service last March 29 on charges of espionage. The reporter had been living and reporting from Russia for six years, first for the New York Times and then the Moscow Times, before joining the WSJ staff in January 2022. His arrest was the first by Russia of an American journalist since the Cold War. He’s reportedly being held in isolation, without even consular access, at the infamous Lefortovo Prison, in Moscow. A Russian court last week extended his pre-trial detention to at least the end of November. In October, he turned 32 in his Russian prison cell.
Other Americans continue to be “detained” by Russia: Paul Whelan, a former Marine, imprisoned since December 2018, also on an espionage charge, and Marc Fogel, a teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, arrested in August 2021 and sentenced to 14 years for having a small amount of marijuana in his luggage. Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was detained last week on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent and remains held.
On the WSJ website, the editorial board prominently proclaims its purpose:
“We speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations.’ So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.”
If you will? As a reader of this statement, I rather think not, what with that creaky watershed, the need to drop names, whatever those “ukases” might be, and the clash of both tense and sense in “over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands….” Bear in mind the last bit, the part that appears to stand against dictators and bullies.
First, to the WSJ’s news department’s credit, they had been running Gershkovich’s stories, which included one he helped write about the Wagner mercenary paramilitary group and its leader, the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, once Putin’s caterer who had irritated Kremlin elites long before staging his short-lived (in more ways than one) armed rebellion in June. A story about how the war and the West’s sanctions are damaging the Russian economy was Gerskovich’s last before his shakedown arrest ordered by Vladimir Putin.
So, what of the WSJ editorial board’s general positions on despots and key aspects of authoritarianism (including the use of disinformation and other forms of propaganda), the countenancing of corruption, and the repression of journalists and those who dissent?
I read commentaries by the WSJ editorial board about Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orbǻn, Trump, the insurrection at the Capitol, the actions of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and his billionaire benefactor, and the last fight over the debt ceiling.
As the WSJ editorial board might preface such a list to get their desired highfalutin tone, to wit:
· Clarence Thomas is being smeared by the left to further tarnish the Supreme Court. That was the WSJ editorial response to the devastating ProPublica investigation. One might comment that the “Fed-Soc”–trained justices on high are doing a supremely good job of discrediting themselves without any assistance from the left. The editorial board also supported Justice Samuel Alito after ProPublica’s report of his luxury fishing vacation paid for by a billionaire with cases before the court, providing him editorial space for a childish rebuttal of a story that had not yet been published and writing about their own nonchalance with judicial corruption.
· Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán continues to be pretty gush-worthy to the editorial board, being “the leader that populist-nationalists hoped Mr. Trump would become.” (Perhaps you can’t manage to fight against every despot, even if it’s part of your two-sentence statement of purpose.)
· What happened on January 6th was not an attempted coup or even an insurrection, merely a disgraceful riot (something to “tut-tut” about over cocktails at one’s favorite expensive bar). Oh, and members of Congress were not to be made to testify to the Jan. 6th committee. (The day after the attempted coup by Trump and his followers, the editorial board was forthright in its defense of the Constitution and the rule of law but concluded by encouraging Trump to resign, partly for Trump’s own good, imagining even at that late date that he could “take personal responsibility” for his actions. So much for their fighting, much less even recognizing, those bullies mentioned in their mission statement.)
· On the 2022 election results, to their credit the editorial board held firm that there was no reason for recounts in Pennsylvania, though they did sign off on a letter to the editor by the Liar-in-Chief without any fact-checking or commentary on his bogus claims of fraud.
· The editorial board apparently believed that the GOP holding the president hostage over the debt ceiling was reasonable, that taking the full faith and credit of the United States to the brink of default was just an okie dokie political play. Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating as a result of Republican brinksmanship on the debt ceiling and, well, governance in general. (So much for standing for that “sound money” they extol in that highfalutin mission statement.)
· The editorial board thinks that the indictment of Trump for taking and then refusing to return classified documents is, well, I guess, a watershed event. The editor writing the headlines engages in some Trumpian mobster-style incitement of violence with “Do prosecutors know the forces they are unleashing?”
· On the death of Henry Kissinger, the board wrote of his “legacy of accomplishment” and pointedly led with an anecdote about how Kissinger, at a recent dinner party, had commented that he “had confidence in the wisdom of the American people, though at the current moment he worried about a dearth of U.S. leadership.” Their use of dearth feels right: it sounds like a combination of “death” and “earth,” which fits the legacy of the man who kept the Vietnam War going so he could climb into power and who caused untold death and suffering across the globe. One wonders which leaders he was allegedly speaking about. The ones from our single still-functioning political party who are adroitly addressing multiple crises on the world stage, or those of the Trump cult party who are hellbent on dismantling our historic alliances and doing other idiotic things, like dropping out of NATO?
Supporting corrupt judges, serving up hearty dishes of disinformation, helping politicians to demonize members of their own supposed profession, and genuflecting toward notorious war criminals — it’s all par for the course for the WSJ editorial board.
As to that disgraceful “riot” of Jan. 6, 2021, for which more than 1,000 insurrectionists have been charged with crimes (the former president being the 1,078th person charged), perhaps editorial page editor Paul Gigot and his staff ought to re-read Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration, from that watershed year they cite in their mission statement, because did he not say of King Trump, er, George: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…”? If Jefferson were alive today, he might have grounds to sue to have the WSJ not reference him in their mission statement.
Since the editorial board invokes Adam Smith (founding father of trickle-down economics), one wonders what Mr. Smith might have to say about Republicans regularly threatening to shut down the government and defaulting on our debts, specifically to make more Americans poorer. Well, he’d probably be more than okay with that last part. (As a friend of mine likes to say, Smith’s “invisible hand” of the market has touched a whole lot of us…inappropriately.)
Getting back to Evan Gerschkovich’s kidnapping by a despotic regime, what will this experience of having one of their own taken by a thug (the right so loves that term, I’ll use it appropriately) and held in miserable conditions do to the editorial stance — the moral intelligence, if you will — of the WSJ editorial board? How will they write of the trust, decency, good faith, truth-telling, adherence to norms, sense of community, and the rule of law fundamental to the survival of all democracies?
Over many decades we have all seen numerous instances of how for some conservatives it takes a personal, emotional event (a family member being wounded or killed by a gun or, say, coming out in some way in a different sexual or gender orientation) to modify or at least create a chink in their hardened worldview. Or, intriguingly (but not surprisingly) a dose of a psychedelic.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox “News” (with which, having the same master, the WSJ editors have a chummy relationship) learned no lessons after buying its way out of any accountability to the public for profiting “bigly” on Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Giving their viewers the nonsense they demand may still work for Fox, but it does nothing good for the country.
As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte notes, the recent “Succession”-like handover of control of the Murdoch empire to son Lachlan likely will only make Fox more determined to spread disinformation, given that the eldest son is reportedly more right-wing than his father and competing media outlets are eager to meet the MAGA crowd’s seemingly insatiable appetite for bullshit:
“For the MAGA crowd, lying is good and consuming lies is how they demonstrate their right-wing bona fides. Fox News, which is hamstrung by fear of lawsuits and Murdoch’s lingering desire to be treated as a respectable figure, has lost esteem with the lie-addicted GOP base.”
Still, the experience of seeing one of your own unjustly arrested and held, a real journalist (unlike those “personalities” at Fox), who’s a colleague, even a friend, is an intense experience — life-altering for Gershkovich and his loved ones and at least life-shaking for his fellow journalists.
My no-doubt stupendously näive hope is that this experience would lead to more than a smidgen of soul-searching by members of the WSJ editorial board on how they write about all aspects of anti-democratic efforts at home, especially in upholding facts and historical truths.
Even if it does not (and, sure, it won’t, unless board members embark on micro-dosing therapy to overcome their deep admiration of those who would grab power at any cost), such things still ought to be said.
Every American who supports the free press also supports all efforts to secure Gershkovich’s release. The WSJ rightly said that his arrest is “a vicious affront to a free press.” But what, then, would any reasonable purveyor of the news call Trump’s ceaseless mantra to his followers that the press is “the enemy of the people”?
At my previous job, from which I retired after 36 years, we revisited our team mission statement each year to see if it still inspired us and covered all we did in changing times. It was an excellent practice. The WSJ editorial board might want to do the same, to bring clarity and a renewed, hopefully pro-democracy, spirit to their statement.
The seemingly historical WSJ mission statement concludes with that flourish of “and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.” I suggest many patriotic, and not particularly ideological, Americans might add “or the bad-faith tempers and anti-democratic machinations of political minorities.”
I would also note that all Americans are opposed to “confiscatory taxation” (and likely those “ukases of Kings,” whatever that means). Most Americans are happy enough to pay their fair share of taxes. They are much more opposed to confiscatory despots and religious zealots who are taking away their cherished rights for self-determination, banning books and defunding libraries and schools while keeping guns as sacred objects, relentlessly “othering” groups of people for political gain, pushing their religious views as policy, and extinguishing our hopes for the future of this democracy.
If nothing else should move this particular editorial board so enamored by material wealth (talking up their devotion to Christian principles while serving Mammon more than a few ridiculously overpriced drinks at the 19th hole down at the country club), one would think, this being the WSJ, it would be — oh, I don’t know — maybe the dynamic economy that flows from an open, multicultural, tolerant society stabilized by stalwart adherence to the rule of law?
Or, you know, as Ron DeSantis promises (when he’s not speaking of “slitting throats”), the entire nation can go the way of Florida.
Your choice, editors.
It’s good that the news side of the business is telling his story, sharing his work, and asking people to help spread the message of his detainment. But the editorial board could do much more to support journalists from the well-understood malign practices of authoritarians, like Trump and his minions, who always fear what journalists are there to expose.
May Evan Gershkovich be speedily released to rejoin those who love him, both at home and at the Wall Street Journal.
