Each year, Time magazine announces the name of an individual, group, idea, or object that has had a profound and significant influence on the events of the past 12 months. For 2018, the news organization announced that this recognition has been given to the murdered journalist and human rights activist, Jamal Khashoggi, and other killed and imprisoned journalists. This decision marks the first time that the news agency has named a “Person of the Year” who is deceased. The selection of the journalist, whom the US government’s intelligence community has determined was brutally tortured before being butchered by Saudi-directed operatives, is to serve as a symbol. According to Time editor Edward Felsenthal, the slain reporter is “the most visible representative of this harrowing year for truth.”
Those named also included the journalists killed in the mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Maryland in June, two Reuters reporters jailed in Myanmar after investigating the massacre of Rohingya Muslims and Maria Ressa, a journalist in the Philippines facing tax evasion charges that she has called “political harassment”.