Jamal Khashoggi & Other Journalists Named Time's Person Of The Year 2018

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(CBS/CNN) -- Time magazine has chosen "The Guardians and the War on Truth," a group of journalists who have been in the news in 2018, as its Person of the Year.

"For taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect but essential quest for facts, for speaking up and for speaking out, the Guardians... are TIME's Person of the Year," the magazine wrote.

The group includes Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was killed at the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul this fall. This is the first time that a Person of the Year is a deceased person.

Also named were the reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists who were arrested late last year in Myanmar while they were working on stories about the killings of Rohingya Muslims, a minority population in Myanmar's Rakhine state. The men remain behind bars.

Time magazine has chosen "The Guardians," a group of journalists who have been targeted for their work, as Person of the Year. (Images: TIME Magazine)

Time also included Maria Ressa, the chief executive of the Philippines news website Rappler. She was indicted last month on tax evasion charges — a case that free speech and civil liberties advocates have warned is part of a wider crackdown on dissent by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's administration.

And rounding out the group is the Capital Gazette, the Annapolis, Maryland newspaper that lost five employees this summer during a mass shooting.

Among the other finalists named Monday were President Donald Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They were named the first and second runners up, respectively.