NECIR Executive Director and Co-Founder Joe Bergantino.
New England Center for Investigative Reporting Executive Director Joe Bergantino has left Russia and is expected home in the U.S. Saturday after being detained for allegedly illegally conducting a journalism workshop in St. Petersburg.
Bergantino said he and University of South Carolina journalism professor Randy Covington were detained over five hours by immigration authorities after beginning a two-day training with 14 Russian journalists, part of a series of workshops taking place in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The two were taken to immigration offices and later a district court where a judge ruled they were guilty of breaking Russian administrative law by illegally conducting an educational workshop with a "targeted tourist visa." The visas they held were the type recommended by the US State Department to do this work. Representatives from the US Consulate accompanied them to the courthouse.
Bergantino said that he and Covington were told they could not continue teaching but were free to leave the country. He texted with a staff member this morning after landing in Paris.
Bergantino's wife, Candy Altman, vice president of news for Hearst Television, spoke to him this morning.
"He's relieved and exhausted,'' Altman said in an email. "(Saturday) can't come soon enough."
Bergantino was in Russia as part of a US State Department grant given to the University of South Carolina to train Russian media. Covington was in Russia several months ago under a different component of the same grant, and with the same type of visa, and encountered no problems, said Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina.
Covington has been in Russia several times and "this is the first time I can recall that we've had any difficulty," said Bierbauer. He said despite strained relations between Russia and the U.S., he had been pleased the workshops had been allowed to go forward.
Altman said the type of work Bergantino does is needed now more than ever.
"Joe devotes his professional life to telling important stories and training journalists here in Boston and around the world...I am always so proud of what he does and what he stands for," Altman said.