Time magazine on Tuesday named journalists, including a slain Saudi Arabian writer and a pair of journalists imprisoned by Myanmar's government, as its "Person of the Year," in a cover story headlined "The Guardians and the War on Truth."

The honor went to a series of journalists including Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was killed two months ago at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul when he went there to collect documents for his forthcoming marriage.

Also honoured was the Capital Gazette in Maryland, USA, where five journalists were killed by a gunman angered by the paper's reporting in June. 

The magazine also recognised Reuters journalists Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who the government of Myanmar convicted on September 3 under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, and Maria Ressa, a journalist from the Philippines targeted for arrest following her criticism of the country's repressive administration. 

Editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal said the four journalists and one news organisation were representative of a broader fight by others around the world, including the at least 52 journalists murdered in 2018.

"It has long been the first move in the authoritarian playbook: controlling the flow of information and debate that is freedom’s lifeblood. And in 2018, the playbook worked" Mr Felsenthal wrote of the choice.

"Today, democracy around the world faces its biggest crisis in decades, its foundations undermined by invective from on high and toxins from below, by new technologies that power ancient impulses, by a poisonous cocktail of strongmen and weakening institutions. From Russia to Riyadh to Silicon Valley, manipulation and abuse of truth is the common thread in so many of this year’s major headlines, an insidious and growing threat to freedom."