‘Times Person of the Year’ are journalists!

Arrested a year ago in Myanmar, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo  were reporting for the Reuters news service exposing the execution of ten Rohingya Muslims, part of a violent campaign against the minority group by Myanmar’s military.This spring, two journalists in India, the world’s largest democracy, were killed in separate, deliberate hit-and-run attacks in the span of 24 hours. In the USA in June, five staffers in a Maryland newsroom were killed. This fall, CNN has had to evacuate its New York offices twice because of bomb threats. From Russia to Riyadh to Silicon Valley, manipulation and abuse of truth is the common thread in so many of this year’s major headlines, a growing threat to freedom. Time magazine recognised four journalists and one news organisation who have paid a terrible price for doing their jobs: Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Md. They are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world, as of 10 December, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018.