NATIONWIDE — Time magazine has named its annual Person of the Year, and it's a group of journalists who it calls "The Guardians."

  • Time magazine names journalists as Person of the Year
  • Group includes Jamal Khashoggi, slain Capital Gazette staff
  • Time is calling the group of journalists "The Guardians"

One of them is Jamal Khashoggi, The Washington Post columnist who was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in early October.

Khashoggi, who lived in the U.S. and had a long career as a journalist, was a frequent critic of the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia.

"The stout man with the gray goatee and the gentle demeanor dared to disagree with his country’s government. He told the world the truth about its brutality toward those who would speak out. And he was murdered for it," Time said.

Also sharing Time's Person of the Year distinction are the five journalists killed in the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting in Maryland.

"In Annapolis, Md., staff of the Capital, a newspaper published by Capital Gazette Communications, which traces its history of telling readers about the events in Maryland to before the American Revolution, press on without the five colleagues gunned down in their newsroom on June 28," Time explained.

Two Reuters journalists are serving time in jail for reporting on the deaths of 10 minority Rohingya Muslims.

"Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo ... documented Myanmar's ethnic cleansing; their prosecution has been widely viewed as retribution. They were sentenced in September to seven years in prison," Time said. 

And Maria Ressa, who has reported heavily on global terrorism, and on the actions of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte.

"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 said.