Time Magazine has revealed their “Person of the Year” edition. The headline is “The Guardians,” and the focus is on journalists who have one thing in common: They have been targeted because of their work.
The Time cover was announced exclusively Tuesday morning on the “Today” show.
The Committee to Protect Journalists have documented 262 cases in 2017 of reporters behind bars around the globe.
For each of these journalists, going after the truth has meant prison, harassment and in some cases, death.
Jamal Khashoggi is the Washington Post columnist from the United States that wrote columns critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was brutally killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October. The CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that bin Salman ordered his murder. President Donald Trump has apparently dismissed that assessment. He said: “It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”
Four journalists and a sales associate were gunned down in a mass shooting at Maryland’s state capital newspaper in June. The MD authorities said that the assailant had sued the newspaper and lost after it reported his guilty plea in a criminal harassment case.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were sentenced by a judge in Myanmar to seven years in prison in September. These journalists with Reuters were found guilty of revealing colonial-era state secrets law while reporting on the military’s mass killing of Rohingya Muslims.
Maria Ressa is the former CNN bureau chief who started the online news site “Rappler” in 2012. She has reported critically on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, that coverage earned the site a “campaign of legal harassment” from Duterte’s Department of Justice.
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