Murdered Journalist Jamal Khashoggi is TIME’s ‘Person of the Year’

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in October this year at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, is named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year”, along with others, recently. It is an honor he shared with other persecuted journalists who are regarded as the guardians of the truth.

Along with Khashoggi, journalists who will be featured in the Magazine cover are Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who are currently imprisoned in Myanmar and the staffs of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis in Maryland, who were killed in a gun battle.

Time Magazine, which has been awarded the “Person of the Year” title every year since 1927, published four different magazine covers for this week’s edition. It is for the first time someone has been chosen posthumously for the prestigious cover. US President Donald Trump was the 2016 “Person of the Year”. This year he is the bookmaker’s favorite.

Time’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal announced this on Tuesday, when he declared, “They are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world - as of December 10, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018 - who risk all to tell the story of our time”.

Edward Felsenthal wrote in an essay titled The Guardians and the War on Truth, “Time selected them for taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect but essential quest for facts that are central to civil discourse, for speaking up and speaking out”.

Those chosen this year reflects the struggles of the journalists in different parts of the world to reveal the truth around. The Capital Gazette newspaper that has been selected for the honor has lost four of its journalists and a staff in June this year, when a gunman entered their newsroom and opened fire ruthlessly.

Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed two months ago at the Saudi consulate in Turkey’s capital Istanbul, is the first person to be nominated. Felsenthal said, “But it’s also very rare that a person’s influence grows so immensely in death. His murder has prompted a global reassessment of the Saudi crown prince and a really long-overdue look at the devastating war in Yemen”.

The cover also features two reporters of Reuters who have been imprisoned for nearly a year in Myanmar after investigating a massacre of Rohingya. While, Maria Ressa is an award-winning Philippine journalist who along with the online news service Rapplers, has been sued for tax evasion. As her website has been critical of the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, thus Maria says the charges are politically motivated.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Manila, after her nomination, Maria said, “How difficult it is to be a journalist. This year we can’t get away from the impunity and the brutal killing of Khashoggi, the jailing of the Reuters journalists and the challenges we face here [in the Philippines]. Journalists are under attack both online and in the real world and these real world dangers are something we have to fight to just be able to do our jobs”.