Time magazine named slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a number of other journalists as its 2018 “Person of the Year.”
Time recognized the journalists who have been targeted for their work, and labeled them “The Guardians.”
The magazine is releasing four covers featuring Washington Post columnist Khashoggi, the surviving staffers of the Capital Gazette newspaper, the wives of Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and Rappler editor Maria Ressa.
“Like all human gifts, courage comes to us at varying levels and at varying moments,” the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal wrote 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: Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Md.”
[Opinion: Time’s Person of the Year shortlist is a hot, divided mess]
Khashoggi is believed to have been killed in October at the direction of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Capital Gazette newsroom was targeted in June by a gunman who killed four journalists and a sales assistant. The Reuters journalists were arrested in Myanmar in December 2017 while investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslims. Ressa is the editor of a Philippine news website that has been critical of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
President Trump, migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, Russian President Vladimir Putin and special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, were also finalists for “Person of the Year.”
