This is a legitimate reason to blackball a media group from ever being informed of a situation in the future. Not just because you don’t like their bias or how they cover things. Because they’re putting a critical situation with a limited timetable at risk, just for a scoop, and the resulting ad revenue.

There’s no reason the swap needs to be disclosed before it happens, but there are legitimate reasons to keep it a secret until then, hence the request to not disclose until after. True investigative journalists can differentiate between these situations. Morally reprehensible bullshit just for that advertising revenue.

For days, various media outlets had been aware — through their own reporting and as information trickled out elsewhere — that a prisoner swap involving American journalists and dissidents was in the works. But news organizations were asked by the White House to hold their stories until Gershkovich et al. were in U.S. custody. Until then, the prisoners would still be in Russian captivity, and officials feared that any attention brought to the fragile deal could risk compromising it — not just for the U.S., but for the multiple other countries whose prisoners were freed as part of the swap.