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** OPINION
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Good morning, everyone. Tom Jones is on vacation, but the team at Poynter is keeping tabs on the latest media news and analysis.


** Russia’s false charges for Evan Gershkovich provoked a ‘loud’ response from The Wall Street Journal
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Reporter Evan Gershkovich hugs his mother, Ella Milman, as President Joe Biden, right, looks on at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., following their release as part of a 24-person prisoner swap between Russia and the United States, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

After 17 months in a Russian prison, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was freed last week in a prisoner swap between the United States and Russia.

During the time Gershkovich was imprisoned — on trumped-up charges of espionage — the Journal relentlessly pursued the story and advocated for the journalist’s release.

Last October, Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker announced assistant editor Paul Beckett would step away from his regular gig ([link removed]) to focus on getting Gershkovich freed.

Appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Beckett said ([link removed]) , “Very very early on, someone in the government to whom I’ll always be grateful to for this advice said there’s a time to be loud and there’s a time to be quiet, and now is the time to be loud. And so we stayed loud until we knew the time to be quiet. And that time to be quiet was Wednesday and Thursday of this week.”

Correspondent Ed O’Keefe asked ([link removed]) whether Beckett was ever concerned “that by being so public, it potentially put him at greater risk or that it put other colleagues either at the Journal or at other publications at greater risk?”

“The Russians didn't give us much of a choice,” Beckett said, “because they came out and said he is a spy. Total nonsense.”

Meanwhile, for The Washington Post, opinion writer Jason Rezaian shared some hard-earned advice ([link removed]) for Gershkovich and the others freed in the prisoner swap — businessman and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a British-Russian dissident and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. Rezaian was imprisoned by Iran for nearly a year and a half and was freed in 2016.

“After the euphoria wears off, though, a new set of challenges will inevitably emerge. Having been cut off from society for months or years, the returning hostages will face difficulty returning to ordinary life,” Rezaian wrote.

He wrote that he found the IRS had charged him thousands of dollars for not filing taxes on time — fees that compounded. His wife’s immigration papers had expired. Bills that were set to autopay had been declined and his credit rating was shattered.

“I was sleeping less than three hours a night, repeatedly waking from nightmares that I was back in prison,” he wrote. “During the day, I was distracted and having trouble concentrating. So I neglected to sit down and address the problem.”

Rezaian urged the House of Representatives to approve a bill — the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which passed through the Senate in May — to help others like Gershkovich.

“As a free society, we owe the victims of this abuse more than our support and empathy,” he wrote. “Considerable resources were expended in the effort to negotiate their release. It is important now to invest more to return them to normal life.”

In an interview after a win at the Olympics, basketball star Brittney Griner, who was also imprisoned by Russia in 2022, said she was “head over heels” ([link removed]) that the Americans had been freed.

“Great day. It’s a great day. It’s a great day,” she said. “… Any day that Americans come home, that’s a win. That’s a win.”

Finally, The New York Times’ Emmett Lindner interviewed Anton Troianovski ([link removed]) , the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times, who, Lindner writes, “has been following the story from both a professional and a personal perspective: He met Mr. Gershkovich in Russia in 2018, and the two bonded over their shared journalistic mission.”

Troianovski wrote a piece on Thursday thatreconstructed how the deal between the U.S. and Russia happened ([link removed]) and what it means for future international agreements. Lindner spoke to him about that story and his friendship with Gershkovich.

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** And now for more media news, tidbits and interesting links
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* What’s the latest with the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? It’s getting hard to follow. On Friday, Trump pulled out ([link removed]) of an ABC News debate set for Sept. 10 that was supposed to be between him and former President Joe Biden. Instead, he said he would appear on Fox News on Sept. 4 and invited Harris to debate him. Harris said she’d see Trump at the event “he already agreed to.” Trump responded, “I’ll see her on September 4th or, I won’t see her at all.” Trump said that if she does not sign on for the proposed Fox News debate — which would include a full audience, unlike the ABC News debate he pulled out of — it would turn into a town hall. It’s unclear if the ABC News debate would become a Harris town hall now that Trump is not part of it. It seems increasingly possible that Harris and Trump will never meet before Election Day.
* Still, on Sunday NewsNation shot its shot ([link removed]) and joined a growing list of news organizations that have pitched debates to the candidates.
* Fascinating stuff from Thomas Bach ([link removed]) , the president of the International Olympic Committee: “We are on track for more than half the world’s population to follow the Olympic Games Paris 2024.”
* In a headline in the print sports section on Friday, The Boston Globe misidentified Algerian boxer Imane Khelif as transgender. (As our colleagues at PolitiFact noted ([link removed]) , Khelif is not transgender; she was born female, has lived her life female and competes female.) In an editor’s note ([link removed]) , the Globe wrote: “We recognize the magnitude of this mistake and have corrected it in the epaper, the electronic version of the printed Globe. This editing lapse is regrettable and unacceptable and we apologize to Khelif, to Associated Press writer Greg Beacham, and to you, our readers.”
* The New York Times’ Emmett Lindner writes, “Ina Jaffe, Dogged and Award-Winning NPR Reporter, Dies at 75.” ([link removed]) Jaffe was an NPR correspondent for nearly 40 years, was the first editor of “Weekend Edition Saturday” and contributed to “All Things Considered.” She was known for her coverage of aging in America. Jaffe’s husband told the Times that she had been living with metastatic breast cancer for several years. Jaffe wrote about her diagnosis in 2021 ([link removed]) .
* NPR’s Scott Simon has more in “Remembering our colleague and friend, Ina Jaffe.” ([link removed]) Simon writes, “Jaffe was the first editor of Weekend Edition. In many ways this program grew out of our Chicago Bureau, and the style of reporting we tried to practice there. ‘Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em come back for more,’ Jaffe used to tell us. I hope you hear that in this show to this day.”
* Notable line in this New York Times story ([link removed]) about China skirting U.S. bans on exports of artificial intelligence chips: “But given the vast profits at stake, businesses around the world have found ways to skirt the restrictions, according to interviews with more than 85 current and former U.S. officials, executives and industry analysts, as well as reviews of corporate records and visits to companies in Beijing, Kunshan and Shenzhen.” That’s a lot of interviews. That’s quality journalism.
* We keep repeating the word “unprecedented” when discussing this political news cycle. But there is precedent for much of it, just not in contemporary history. And then there’s this:“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Admits He Left a Dead Bear in Central Park.” ([link removed]) The New York Times’ Emma G. Fitzsimmons writes that Kennedy “confessed on Sunday that he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park in Manhattan in 2014 because he thought it would be ‘amusing.’” Uhh … pretty sure this one is actually unprecedented.

Today’s Poynter Report was written by Ren LaForme.


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Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .
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