It's a choice that's hotly debated each year: which person deserved to be named Time magazine's Person of the Year?
While being put on the magazine's cover is prestigious, earning the title isn't always an honor, as the magazine sometimes selects newsmakers who have grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons.
This week, Time unveiled the wide-ranging group that would be featured as 2018's "Person" of the Year, a global group of journalists they call "The Guardians."
The group includes Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Philippine news editor Maria Ressa, journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo of Reuters, and the staff of Annapolis, Maryland's Capital Gazette, where four employees were killed by a gunman in June.
The shared connection between these journalists from around the world is that they have all faced life-threatening danger or persecution while fighting the worldwide "War on Truth," as Time called it.
Khashoggi was killed in October in what was widely believed to be a politically motivated assassination, Ressa has been an outspoken critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and Lone and Oo were both imprisoned while investigating the massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
The Guardians"”Jamal Khashoggi, the Capital Gazette, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo"”are TIME's Person of the Year 2018. #TIMEPOY https://t.co/QbX0IyqXs4 pic.twitter.com/Sg6z42bHmp
— TIME (@TIME) December 11, 2018
In an essay about the choice, Time's editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote that the Guardians "are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world - as of Dec. 10, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018 - who risk all to tell the story of our time."
It was a historic choice, since Khashoggi's inclusion makes this the first year when Time has given the Person of the Year title to someone who is deceased.
The magazine revealed that President Donald Trump, 2016's Person of the Year, was this year's runner up, while Special Counsel Robert Mueller came in third place.
Last year's "Person" of the Year was another group called The Silence Breakers, people who spoke out about sexual abuse and harassment, including several celebrity members of the #Me Too movement.
