Time names killed, jailed journalists as 2018 Person of the Year

Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year title goes to the “guardians and the war on truth.”

The honour has been given to four journalists and a newspaper that Time says “are representatives of a broader fight by countless others around the world.

Time’s editor in chief Edward Felsenthal made the announcement Tuesday on NBC’s Today show. The magazine recognizes the person or group of people who most influenced the news and the world “for better or for worse” during the past year.

The “guardians” are:

• Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent Saudi journalist who was killed in that country’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
• The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., where five people were shot and killed at the newspaper’s offices in June.
• Maria Ressa, a detained Philippine journalist who is head of independent news website Rappler​.
• Reuters journalists Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who have been jailed in Myanmar for nearly a year.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were convicted on Sept. 3 under Myanmar’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, in a case seen as a test of democratic freedoms in the Southeast Asian country. They were sentenced to seven years in prison after reporting on the mass killing of Rohingya by Myanmar’s military.View image on Twitter