Good People of the Year

Time names Felgenhauer and Babchenko as 2018 Personas

Since 1927, Time magazine has been choosing the person of the year (until 1999, the nomination was called "Person of the Year" or "Woman of the Year", then a more neutral Person appeared). The magazine emphasizes that we are not talking about an award or obvious sympathy towards the "persons" from the editorial board. The nomination makes it clear how the world works and who is truly influential in it.

For example, in 1983, this allowed Time to choose Andropov and Reagan as people of the year, Khrushchev in 1957, and Stalin in 1942. In recent years, collective nominations have been increasingly awarded, which, perhaps, demonstrates a trend towards the democratization of the world. In 2017, Time named the #metoo movement Persons of the Year for telling the world the truth about sexual assault. This year on the cover of the magazine - "Guardians" (The Guardians), these are journalists who defended the interests of society and became victims of persecution by the authorities or direct violence.

Among them, Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey, Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, convicted of criticizing the president, Reuters correspondents taken hostage during an investigation into the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Myanmar, employees of the American newspaper The Capital, who were shot during an attack by a criminal to the editors, as well as Tatyana Felgenhauer and Arkady Babchenko.

From a political point of view, Time's gesture is understandable. There is more and more information, and the profession of a journalist is turning into an anachronism - after all, now everyone can publish texts or videos. Nevertheless, journalists continue to be killed and persecuted around the world. Killers are those who do not like not only the words told by reporters, but also the mission that they voluntarily take on - to tell people the truth, no matter what it costs.

In a world where every author, journalist is closer to a human rights activist and a monk bound by professional ethics. And it is precisely following ethics that is the main risk of a journalist.

Without these "guardians" the old values ​​of freedom, open discussion and democracy will become impossible, Time reminds us.

A particularly severe shortage of "guardians" in authoritarian states, where the truth is always dangerous, and the work of professionals, not propagandists, is under an unspoken ban. So the fact that there are two of our colleagues on the Time list at once is both joyful and sad. It means that the stakes for professionalism in Russia remain very high. And it also means that right now, overcoming censorship and resistance, it can be done in such a way that it sounds to the whole world.

Tatyana Felgengaeur recovered from the attack on her at Ekho Moskvy and returned to work. Having received the “person of the year”, Tatyana tweeted that now she can retire, but this is clearly not the case, and everything is just beginning.

Arkady Babchenko was declared dead by the Ukrainian authorities, then resurrected, and also continues to work - the way he imagines the honest work of a journalist from Russia during the war. We do not share Babchenko's current views in everything and cannot explain some of the details of the staged assassination attempt on him. But they were happy when they found out that Babchenko was alive, and they are happy now that he has received an award - let more people read his texts about the war.

It is a pity that Time does not mention Orkhan Dzhemal and his colleagues who tragically died in the CAR among the “guardians”.

But we know that they also deserve to be on this list, like all the journalists who died in 2018, just doing their job.