Time magazine's "Person of the Year" has been given to "guardians, and the war on truth."  The four journalists and a newspaper "are representatives of a broader fight by countless others around the world."

They are:

• Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed at Saudi Arabia's consulate in Turkey
• Maria Ressa, the arrested founder and editor of a news site in the Philippines 
• Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar for nearly a year
• The Capital Gazette, an American newspaper in Maryland whose headquarters were attacked in a shooting that killed five people

"Today, democracy around the world faces its biggest crisis in decades, its foundations undermined by invective from on high and toxins from below, by new technologies that power ancient impulses, by a poisonous cocktail of strongmen and weakening institutions," editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote in an essay.

"They are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world — as of December 10, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018 — who risk all to tell the story of our time," Felsenthal wrote.

They were selected "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 speaking out."

Person of the Year in 2016, President Donald Trump, was this year's second runner-up. "His ultimate impact may be determined as much by the resistance he engenders as by the goals he pursues," the magazine said. In third place was special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

dv/jm (AFP, AP)

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