A group of journalists whose work has landed them in jail — or cost them their lives — have been named Time’s Person of the Year for 2018.
The magazine’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal announced its choice of “The Guardians and the War on Truth” on the “Today” show Tuesday, and revealed the four magazine covers feature Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, the Capital Gazette staff of Annapolis, Maryland, and the wives of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.
“Like all human gifts, courage comes to us at varying levels and at varying moments,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote in an essay about the selection. “This year we are recognizing four journalists and one news organization who have paid a terrible price to seize the challenge of this moment.”
In honoring Khashoggi, Felsenthal noted it is the first year Time has named someone who is no longer alive as Person of the Year. Khashoggi, who lived in the U.S. and wrote for The Washington Post, was publicly critical of the Saudi crown prince. He was killed in what U.S. officials have described as an elaborate plot at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which he had visited for marriage paperwork.
Ressa is founder and executive editor of the Philippine digital news outlet Rappler and a vocal critic of the government of President Rodrigo Duterte. In return, she has faced several government lawsuits and threats of violence, according to The Associated Press. Ressa, who has worked with CNN, was the winner of two prestigious journalism awards this year, a Press Freedom award from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and the International Center for Journalists’ Knight International Journalism Award.
The gunman who opened fire at the Capital Gazette newspaper, killing five people, had a “vendetta” against the paper over an article it published in 2011 about criminial harassment to which he pleaded guilty to. But, a day after the massacre at the Maryland newspaper, Gazette staffers “did what it has done since before the American Revolution—they put the paper out,” Time said in a statement.
The other two honorees, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, are currently imprisoned over their reporting in 2016 on the brutal crackdown by security forces on the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which, according to the AP, left hundreds dead in the massacre. The U.N.’s top human rights body has said that genocide charges should be brought against senior Myanmar military officers over the crackdown.
The magazine said the four individuals and the lone newspaper symbolize something bigger than themselves.
“They are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world — as of Dec. 10, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018 — who risk all to tell the story of our time,” Felsenthal wrote in his essay.
A shortlist revealed Monday that included Donald Trump, Separated Familes, Meghan Markle, Vladimir Putin, Robert Mueller, Ryan Coogler, Christine Blasey Ford, slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, March For Our Lives Activists, and Moon Jae-in.
Time has made the designation every year since 1927. Last year, the magazine’s editors selected The Silence Breakers, the individuals who spoke up and sparked a national reckoning over the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault.
The year before that, 2016, was Donald Trump, who had just become president-elect after stunning the nation — and the world — by winning the White House race.
Trump was again a finalist last year and made the 2018 short list, which includes two other world leaders, a university professor, families torn apart and American royalty.
Source : Nbcnewyork
