When Time magazine named the Guardians — a group of journalists who died or were imprisoned in the course of their work — as its Persons of the Year, it broke with its longstanding tradition of never putting a deceased individual on the year-end cover.

The cover is not always meant as an honor, but is intended to portray the person or persons who had the greatest impact.

Time Editor Ed Felsenthal said of this year’s pick, “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 for speaking out, the Guardians — Jamal Khashoggi, the Capital Gazette, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo — are Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year 2018.”