In terms of importance, I think this was practically a given, but I've seen statements from people doubting if the Pulitzer Prize Board would have the courage to make a decision that still wouldn't sit well with certain powerful people.
Turns out they did. I'm very pleased to see that. Congratulations to the winners!
Time Magazine has an annual feature called "Person of the Year", in which they devote the cover story of the issue to talking about the most influential person of the year.
There is a perception among some people that the selection process is biased away from controversial figures. Last year's Person of the Year was Pope Francis; some people thought it should have been (e.g.) Edward Snowden. He was the runner-up.
> There is a perception among some people that the selection process is biased away from controversial figures
Its's more than a perception, they've tacitly admited it. Wikipedia:
As a result of the public backlash it received from the United States for naming the Khomeini as Man of the Year in 1979, Time has shied away from using figures that are controversial in the United States due to commercial reasons. Time's Person of the Year 2001, immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, was New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, although the stated rules of selection, the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news, made Osama bin Laden a more likely choice. The issue that declared Giuliani the Person of the Year included an article that mentioned Time's earlier decision to elect the Ayatollah Khomeini and the 1999 rejection of Hitler as "Person of the Century". The article seemed to imply that Osama bin Laden was a stronger candidate than Giuliani, as Adolf Hitler was a stronger candidate than Albert Einstein.
It's kind of sad, really. Person Of The Year should not necessarily be a positive thing - just the most important person of the year. But we're long since past that now.
Well, the phrasing "X of the year" is almost always taken to mean "best X of the year". Consider "movie of the year," "book of the year," and so on. Probably they should have called it "Most Influential person of the year" to avoid the default fallback of "Best person of the year".
Decades ago, Time had enough credibility that their awarding "Man of the Year" was seen as an influential act. I don't know if it was Khomeni, economics, or what, but Time has driven their brand into the ground far enough that they are now awarding it to "gosh I hope so" recipients like the pope, similar to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.
Going off-topic but IMO, I personally don't think of Hitler as more influential in changing the course of human history than Albert Einstein. The rise of fascism and Nazism, and the occurrence of WWII was a direct outcome of the results of WW I. I believe most of those events would have transpired, even if Hitler was at the helm or not.
It's a fair argument, and one that looks favourable to Einstein. As someone who did a Masters in Physics, I find that his theories were so counter-intuitive for the time that it would have taken decades or longer for them to be discovered by others without his input...
And if you attribute the existence of nuclear weapons to Einstein (a legacy he'd have been pretty unhappy about), that changed the world much more lastingly than Hitler did. Hell, it almost destroyed the world entirely. How's that for a legacy.
Not sure who still reads Time anyway. It has become such a tabloid over the years, I have no idea why any of their articles or decisions regarding the person of the year would be regarded with any kind of credibility.
As logn says, and they also named Zuckerberg as person of the year instead of Assange, in 2011. For some reason they decided that was the year they needed to celebrate Zuckerberg.
Both Zuckerberg and Assange started websites in the mid-2000s which had attracted considerable attention before 2011, but Zuckerberg spent that year gearing up for an IPO, whereas Assange spent it refusing to answer to rape charges.
Facebook's IPO didn't happen until two years later and isn't mentioned anywhere in TIME's POTY article. So I doubt that has anything to do with anything.
Meanwhile it was the year of "Collateral Murder" and the diplomatic cable leaks; it was arguably the year Wikileaks went from unknown to notorious.
Assange was at least in part resisting a possible extradition to the U.S.
More than 'in part'. It's the entire reason. He has stated he will go to Sweden to answer the (really obviously trumped-up, btw) charges if they will guarantee he won't be extradited to the US. Since the reason the Swedes want him in the first place is so they can hand him over to the Americans, obviously they have declined.
My mistake for taking 2011[1] from higher up in the thread rather than checking the magazine itself, which as you correctly point out gave Zuckerberg the award at the end of 2010; Wikileaks' peak. I still think controversy over the rape allegations at the end of the year did more harm to harm Assange's chances of nomination than damage he did to US govt interest since "the Protestor" (including specific Occupy references) won the award in 2011 and Putin a few years before. They've been pretty consistent about ignoring poll results too.
[1]Irrespective of whether you feel Assange was trying to avoid a hatchet job and rendition to the US, justice or something in between, 2011 was a bad year for him. I don't think he'd disagree.
this was no a cop out on Time's part. Francis does have/will have a more far reaching effect than Edward Snodwen. The value of Snowden's revelation is that people can no longer just laugh about being spied on, all countries have simply been proven to do so.
The danger here is that far too many will again just laugh it off as they justify to themselves they cannot do anything about it and worse really just don't care to expend the effort.
I am genuinely interested in why you think pope Francis has far more effect. There has been many popes in the recent past, how many people even remember their names? Pope Francis is trying to change some policies which might have a larger impact, but we are yet to see that. I would argue that Snowden's revelations are more unique and had an impact similar to 9/11.
There are an awful lot of people that care passionately about what the leader of the Catholic Church - notional membership 1.16Bn - is saying whilst being pretty indifferent to the US government having the ability to intercept their communications (or unsurprised that it's the case) even once you'd explained who Snowden was and why his revelations mattered.
It's not just the US who is intercepting communications, it's at least the Five (plus) Eyes signatories[1].
Also, you can't have it both ways and say Catholics care passionately about the Pope but surveilled citizens are too jaded to care when comparing the effects of the two. How many Catholics are indifferent to the Pope, care passionately about governments surveilling their citizens?
Time received a good deal of criticism for their choice for their Person of the Year. I believe Edward Snowden was winning the online polling for a while (all of it?), but the POTY is ultimately an editorial decision not a poll.
Turns out they did. I'm very pleased to see that. Congratulations to the winners!