Time Magazine dedicated the 'Person of the Year' to 'Guardians' and imprisoned journalists yesterday, with a focus on the murdered Washington Post reporter Khashoggi. Of course, Saudi Arabia has something to say about that.
The Saudi Twitter account “خبر عاجل” [Breaking News] identified as a news account tweeted a week before the magazine's official announcement, that Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, was chosen by the TIME magazine as the 2018 Person of the Year.
The account that has more than 6 million followers tweeted an official image of MBS with a caption that read: “US-based TIME Magazine choose his Highness MBS to be on the list of the “Person of the Year” for 2018. He is considered the only Arab personality to be chosen by the magazine to proceed world leaders on the TIME list for Person of the Year 2018.”
The post was retweeted and liked by thousands of Saudi users who went to praise and express pride in the Crown Prince’s “outstanding” achievement.
Translation: “He is our source of pride and glory. May God protect him.”
Translation: “He deserves it. May God protect him and bless him with long life.”
It did not take the post too long to be filled with photos of the actual magazine that has Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on its cover page.
Translation: “The electronic bots do actually believe it! Put some effort into checking the actual TIME link. It is not that hard!”
Some Saudis believe to have mixed up the magazine results of the last year with this one. As in 2017, Mohammed bin Salman won the online reader poll for the ‘Person of the Year’.
However, other Saudis did not believe this and insisted on the fact that MBS had been chosen by TIME magazine for this year.
Translation: “What is to prove that the magazine actually manipulated the names and that MBS was heading the list and Khashoggi was not there at all, then they replaced MBS with Khashoggi to shows us that he [Khashoggi] is the Person of the Year like the magazine wanted it and not the choices of the audience.”
The original post by the Saudi account flooded the Arabic social media with many correcting it.
On Tuesday, the TIME Magazine featured four different covers with journalists who have been targeted for their work this year; including Jamal Khashoggi who was brutally killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2nd October 2018.
While official investigations have not confirmed who is behind Khashoggi’s killing, according to the US CIA all of the evidence points to the Saudi Crown Prince.
