Time magazine announced the "Person of the Year", which attracts much attention across the world, on Tuesday.

A group of journalists, named as "The Guardians", who were either killed, arrested, or charged, acquired the title. They include Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, five members of the Capital Gazette staff, journalist Maria Ressa, and Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.

Their pictures were issued on four different covers of the magazines.

Jamal Khashoggi was an influential Saudi Arabian journalist who was murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on Oct 2 this year.

Before that, he had worked as a columnist for the Washington Post and been very critical of the Saudi authorities.

On the day of his disappearance, he was supposed to prepare paperwork to marry his fiancée, who had waited for him for hours outside the consulate but he never returned.

He was listened repeating "I can't breathe" in an audio recording during his last moments, according to Reuters.

Five members of an American newspaper, The Capital, ran by the Capital Gazette Communications, were killed in a mass shooting carried out by a gunman on June 28 this year.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were Burmese journalist serving for Reuters. They were sentenced to seven years in jail with hard labor.

Maria Ressa is a Filipino journalist who has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte on her self-founded site, Rappler. The site's license was revoked in January this year, and in November, the site was charged with tax evasion.