Bloomberg takes disciplinary action against journalists who "prematurely published" the release of Evan Gershkovich

It has been almost a week since Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan have been on U.S. soil. Their release was one of the biggest news stories last Thursday and the first media outlet to report it was Bloomberg.

However, the paper skipped the publication date that had been agreed upon by several US media outlets and Bloomberg's editor-in-chief John Micklethwait responded by announcing that the newspaper would retaliate against staff who violated the embargo and who "published prematurely" the release of Gershkovich and the rest of the prisoners.

Micklethwait reported this decision in a memo he sent to his employees that was obtained by The New York Times. In the brief, the editor-in-chief  confirmed that the journalists' skipping the embargo "could have jeopardized the negotiated exchange that freed them."

"While our story fortunately had no effect, it was a clear violation of the editorial standards that have made this newsroom so trusted around the world."John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of 'Bloomberg News'

Along with the disciplinary measures, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News assured that he had contacted Gershkovich, Whelan and the rest of the prisoners to apologize for what had happened as well as with the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, one of the people who denounced that the newspaper had skipped the embargo that had been agreed to by several U.S. media outlets.

In addition, Michlethwait stated that Bloomberg "will review our processes to ensure that failures like this don't happen again."

"We publish thousands of stories every day, many of which are breaking news. We take accuracy very seriously, but we also have a responsibility to do the right thing. In this case we didn't."John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of 'Bloomberg News'

Disciplinary action did not take long. Bloomberg has decided to fire one of the journalists who signed off on the story: White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs.

The journalist took to the social network X and published a statement in which she assured that she never did "anything that was deliberately incompatible with the administration's embargo or that put anyone involved at risk."

Along with this, the reporter asserted that "the idea of endangering the safety of a colleague is deeply disturbing at a level that is difficult to describe."

However, she said, she did not decide when the article was released, since, she assured in the statement, journalists "don't have the final say on when a story is published or with what headline," claiming that she had nothing to do with the story being published earlier than it should have been.