Journalists, Including Rappler’s Ressa Named Time ‘Person of the Year’

JOURNALISTS FROM four countries including RapplerChief Executive Officer and Executive Editor Maria Ressa are Time Magazine’s 2018 “Person of the Year.”

Time honored the Philippines’ Ressa together with Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soo who are currently imprisoned in Myanmar; and the staff of Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, USA, five of whom were gunned down in their newsroom in June 28. The journalists are dubbed “The Guardians.”

“They 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,” Time Editor in Chief Edward Felsenthal wrote.

Ressa, said Felsenthal, “has faced a barrage of government lawsuits aimed at the site, and violent hate messages on social media” for Rappler’s “fearless reporting on President Rodrigo Duterte’s propaganda machine and extrajudicial killings.”

Ressa is currently facing tax evasion charges. The Justice Department accused her of violating Section 254 and 255 of the National Internal Revenue Code. (See Alert: Rappler’s Maria Ressa Posts Bail”)

Aside from the tax evasion charges, Rappler faces other challenges: the revocation of its incorporation papers in January this year, the banning of Rappler reporter Pia Ranada from covering the president, and a cyber-libel complaint against Ressa and one of her reporters.

Time recognized Rappler’s effort to chronicle the violent drug war and the extrajudicial killing of some 12,000 people, according to a January estimate of Human Rights Watch.

“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 for speaking out, the Guardians—Jamal Khashoggi, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Maria Ressa and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Md.—are TIME’s Person of the Year,” wrote Felsenthal.

Time has been featuring since 1927 persons and groups who have influenced events through their “Person of the Year” special.