Time’s Person of the Year honors truth over bluster

There’s poetic justice in Time magazine’s selection of four journalists and a newspaper as its 2018 Person of the Year. The runner-up choice is President Donald J. Trump, who has denigrated dedicated mainstream reporters by accusing them of being “enemies of the people.”

Trump’s unrelenting attack on a free press has emboldened dictators and other morally bankrupt leaders around the world to order the killing of journalists who spotlight their acts of violence against their own people.

It is, therefore, heartening to view Time’s four different covers of the much-anticipated annual edition that was launched in 1927. It’s the first time the magazine has featured a journalist or has recognized someone post- humously.

On the 2018 covers are:

Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the ruling royal family in Saudi Arabia who was assassinated on orders of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, according to the CIA.

Khashoggi, who was living in the United States and was a columnist for the Washington Post, died in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October.

President Trump has dismissed the CIA reports about the assassination, leading many to conclude that he believes the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship is more important than the death of a journalist at the hands of government assassins.

The staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md. A gunman killed four journalists and a sales assistant at the newspaper offices.

Despite the physical and emotional turmoil, the staff of the Gazette did not miss a beat when it came to publishing the newspaper. Editors and reporters took their laptop computers into the parking lot to report on the deaths of their colleagues.

Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, who co-founded the online site the Rappler. The site has aggressively covered the government of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

Ressa was recently charged with tax fraud, leading many in the country to conclude that it was a reaction to the Rappler’s reporting.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo of Reuters news service who have been jailed in Myanmar for a year.

The journalists were imprisoned after investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslims.

Time magazine appropriately described the recipients of the highly regarded award as “The Guardians,” given their willingness to put their lives on the line for the good of mankind.

The long essay in Time that detail the reasons for the decision and relate the personal stories of these brave and largely unheralded journalists should be required reading in every high school civics class and college journalism program.

As writer Karl Vick put it so well:

“This ought to be a time when democracy leaps forward, an informed citizenry being essential to self-government. Instead, it’s in retreat. Three decades after the Cold War defeat of a blunt and crude autocracy, a more clever brand takes nourishment from the murk that surrounds us. The old-school despot embraced censorship. The modern despot, finding that more difficult, foments mistrust of credible fact, thrives on the confusion loosed by social media and fashions the illusion of legitimacy from supplicants.”

To repeat: “The modern despot ... foments mistrust of credible fact, thrives on confusion loosed by social media and fashions the illusion of legitimacy from supplicants.”

A free, unfettered press has been the hallmark of the world’s greatest democracy, the United States. However, the more President Trump seeks to delegitimize journalists, the greater the danger that this country will cease to be the beacon of freedom and morality.

A fan of dictators

As we have noted in this space on numerous occasions, Trump’s public embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping has raised eyebrows around the world.

As Ressa, editor of the Rappler, has written:

“I think the biggest problem that we face right now is that the beacon of democracy, the one who stood up for both human rights and press freedom – the United States – now is very confused. What are the values of the United States?”

What, indeed?

By spotlighting the four journalists and staff of the Capital Gazette in its Person of the Year edition, Time magazine has shown that hope can spring eternal because of individuals brave enough to risk everything for the honorable cause of freedom of the press.