Time Person of the Year 2018: Murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi named among winners for War on Truth, as Trump is declared runner-up

TIME
Megan White11 December 2018

TIME Magazine has named Jamal Khashoggi, three other journalists and a newspaper as its Person of the Year 2018.

The group, dubbed The Guardians by Time Magazine, have all been honoured for their work in the “War on Truth.”

The people named are Mr Khashoggi, the Capital Gazette, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.

Donald Trump was named as the runner up and Robert Mueller, who is leading the investigation into claims of Russian meddling in the US election, was named in third place.

Mr Khashoggi and five reporters at the Capital Gazette were all killed this year, with Ms Ressa arrested and the two Reuters journalists detained for a year.

The Saudi Arabian columnist, 59, was murdered after a visit to the country's embassy in Istanbul on October 2.

TIME

The Washington Post writer, who was an outspoken critic of the kingdom’s government, was attacked moments after going into the consulate to collect documents for his upcoming wedding.

Mystery has surrounded the events which led to his death, with Saudi Arabia accepting he died in the building, though statements as to what happened have been inconsistent.

The staff at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, were celebrated for continuing with their coverage despite five colleagues being shot and killed in their office on June 28.

Jarrod Ramos, a local man who had held a vendetta against the paper since they reported on his harassment of a high school acquaintance threatened the paper from the article’s publication in 2011 until he stormed their office, killing five and injuring two with a shotgun.

Maria Ressa (L) and the wives of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo (R)
TIME

Maria Ressa is co-founder of Filipino news site Rappler, and has criticised President Duterte’s anti drug crackdown, which has killed nearly 5,000 people since 2016.

She has been threatened with prison and closure of the site because of her stance, and was charged with tax fraud last month – a claim she says is an attempt to “harass and intimidate” her organisation.

Reuters reporters Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone were arrested in Myanmar on December 12, 2017, while investigating the execution of 10 Rohingya men.

Jamal Khashoggi (L) and the staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper (R)
TIME

They were invited for dinner by a police official, but after the meal, the police handed the reporters some papers, and they were arrested for possessing “state secrets”, despite not having read them.

In September, the pair were sentenced to seven years in prison.

They insist they were framed to stop them reporting on the massacre because it implicated state security forces, and a police captain who testified the same was prosecuted separately.

Last year’s Person of the Year was The Silence Breakers, which included the figureheads of the Me Too movement.

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