This whole thing becomes a clown show when the laughable attempt is made to equate Trump's criticism of the press with authoritarian regimes murdering, imprisoning, and oppressing reporters.
This is one of the biggest problems with the media today: its guild mentality, its view of itself as a clergy of truth and a branch of world government. Media absolutely should not be oppressed, but neither should it have a monopoly on speech or a shield against criticism.
The constant media refrain that arguing with them, criticizing them, or denigrating them is the beginning of a slippery slope that ends with firing squads and dungeon cells for reporters is a shameful effort to use real oppression around the world as a shield against criticism.
It also plays into the absurd media narrative that America is descending into authoritarianism because Trump was elected. This concern is nowhere to be found when a Democrat administration really IS massively increasing centralized state power and manipulating the press.
Also, Time wants to shower the press with glory without admitting 2018 was an absolutely horrible year for bad media, filled with sloppy reporting and thick with political bias, culminating in the absolute disgrace of Kavanaugh coverage.
How the hell can anyone write a story about the "assault on truth" without mentioning the Democrat-media war on Brett Kavanaugh? Reporters fell for every piece of B.S. the Democrats fed them. A man's life was nearly destroyed with scurrilous charges.
The awful fact that reporters around the world are oppressed does not give every reporter everywhere unlimited credibility. On the contrary, it should make serious "guardians of truth" all the more enraged at sloppy reporting, political bias, and childish grandstanding.
Worst of all is that American media has become incapable of talking honestly about itself. It LOVES talking about itself and showering itself with awards, but it has lost its capacity for self-criticism and introspection. It prefers heroic myths over humble analysis.
Nowhere is this currently more evident than in the deification of Jamal Khashoggi, whose murder was utterly reprehensible, but who most certainly was NOT a saintly guardian of truth and classical liberal ideals of free speech.
You may rest comfortably assured that freedom of the press is not high on the list of government priorities anywhere Khashoggi's Islamist ideology holds sway. It should be possible to condemn his murder without whitewashing what he advocated or the consequences of those ideas.
But that's the media's problem in a nutshell: it doesn't DO nuanced analysis of itself. It's all saints and sinners, heroes and villains, myths and legends. The clumsy wording of Time's Person of the Year - "The Guardians and the War on Truth" - reflects this muddled ideology.
Time couldn't just give the award to "Journalists" because some of the people it wanted to salute aren't really "journalists." It couldn't say "Media" because it would have been laughed off the Internet. It didn't quite have the nerve to go all-in and name Khashoggi alone. /end
