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.