Asian journalists among Time’s 2018 Person of the Year'

Time magazine made four covers for its Person of the Year issue. Two of them featured the wives of imprisoned
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and Maria Ressa. right.

TIME MAGAZINE named three Asian journalists along with slain Saudie columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the staff of the Capitol Gazette, victims of a mass shooting, as its 2018 Person of the Year Tuesday (Dec. 11).

"The Guardians," says Time emphasizes the important role of journalists and press freedom in today's world where reporters and editors are threatened, killed and jailed for doing their job -- reporting the news. 

They are journalists from different parts of the world who are "taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect but essential quest for facts, for speaking up and for speaking out," writes Time.

The three Asian journalists were Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, who was threatened with jail for criticizing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs in her online news site; and Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who have been jailed in Myanmar for a year.

"As we looked at the choices it became clear that the manipulation and abuse of truth is really the common thread in so many of this year's major stories, from Russia to Riyadh to Silicon Valley," said Edward Felsenthal, Time's editor-in-chief.

"So we chose to highlight four individuals and one group who have taken great risks in pursuit of greater truth ..."

"In the Philippines, a 55-year-old woman named Maria Ressa steers Rappler, an online news site she helped found, through a superstorm of the two most formidable forces in the information universe: social media and a populist President with authoritarian inclinations," Time wrote in its cover article. 

"Rappler has chronicled the violent drug war and extrajudicial killings of President Rodrigo Duterte that have left some 12,000 people dead, according to a January estimate from Human Rights Watch. The Duterte government refuses to accredit a Rappler journalist to cover it, and in November charged the site with tax fraud, allegations that could send Ressa to prison for up to 10 years."

On the day Time honored her, Ressa paid her bail to avoid jail on charges of tax fraud, which Ressa says is a harassment tactic of the administration.

"Rappler's fearless journalism has helped to expose the deadly reality of the so-called 'war on drugs' – and the thousands of unlawful killings of poor and marginalized people perpetrated in its name," Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International's East and Southeast Asia regional director, said in a statement.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are a pair of young Reuters journalists who were placed behind bars by the government of Myanmar because of their reporting on the killings of Rohingya Muslims human rights advocates call "ethnic cleansing."

“For documenting the deaths of 10 minority Rohingya Muslims, Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone got seven years,” TIME reported. “The killers they exposed were sentenced to 10.”

The magazine went on to say: "As the government and military offered full-throated denials of wrongdoing against the Rohingya, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were uncovering information about the bloodshed Myanmar has tried to shield from the world. The Reuters investigation, which was published in February, documented with photographic evidence the slaughter and mass burial of 10 Rohingya men. In return, they were accused of providing information that could be useful “to enemies of the state.”

Khashoggi was killed by Saudi henchmen because of Washington Post articles about the Saudi Arabia regime.

The Gazette was targeted by a gunman who went to their office in Annapolis, Maryland and killed fiveof the newspaper's employees.

The Washington Post applauded Time for its message of support for journalists.

"We hope this recognition will prompt our nation's leaders to stand up for America's values and hold accountable those who attempt to silence journalists who cover our communities or in Jamal's case, an oppressive authoritarian government," said Fred Ryan, the Post's publisher and CEO.
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