WASHINGTON — Four journalists and an Annapolis, Maryland news organization have been named Time’s Person of the Year for 2018. They are what Time calls “guardians and the war on truth.”
“This year we are recognizing four journalists and one news organization who have paid a terrible price to seize the challenge of this moment: Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Maryland,” Time Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal wrote in an essay.
Five people — Rob Hiaasen, Rebecca Smith, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara and Wendi Winters — were killed at the Capital Gazette on June 28. Jarrod Ramos has been charged with murder in the shootings and is set to go on trial in June 2019.
“The Gazette, one of the oldest papers in America, did what it’s done since before the Revolution, got a paper out the next day and continues to do so with courage,” said Time’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal, making the announcement on NBC’s Today Show.
There are multiple magazine covers revealing the faces of the journalists.
Here’s the story behind TIME’s 2018 Person of the Year covers #TIMEPOY https://t.co/iMvBF5ri8T
— TIME (@TIME) December 11, 2018
Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, was killed at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in October.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are two Reuters journalists who were arrested in Myanmar while they were working on stories about the killings of Rohingya Muslims, a minority population in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The two men remain behind bars. Their wives were photographed for the cover.
And the fourth cover shows Maria Ressa, chief executive of the Philippines news website Rappler. She was indicted last month on tax evasion charges — a case that free speech and civil liberties advocates have warned is part of a wider crackdown on dissent by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
Time’s Person of the Year is not an honor or award. It is meant to recognize person or group of people who most influenced the news and the world — for better or for worse — during the past year.
President Trump came in at No. 2 for Person of the Year. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was No. 3.
CNN contributed to this report
