TIME Magazine did not announce WikiLeaks CEO Julian Assange as the ‘Person of the Year.’

The image is digitally edited. TIME Magazine announced Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as the ‘Person of the Year.’ for 2021.

An image of the cover photo of the TIME magazine is circulating on social media claiming that the magazine has awarded the tag of “Person of the Year” to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The image shows Julian Assange’s face on the cover with a text written below it that reads, “The Fight for Truth and Justice: A Life in Isolation.”

The caption of the image states, “Julian Assange spoke out against war crimes committed against coloured folk and because of this he is still imprisoned.”

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Who is Julian Assange?

He is the founder of WikiLeaks apart from being an editor, publisher and activists. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

Fact Check-

We started our investigation by running a keyword search on Google to find relevant news reports. However, we could not find any report that corroborated the same. 

Next, we visited Time’s website where we found that TIME Magazine has announced Elon Musk as the “Person of the Year” for 2021. They also streamed this video in December 2021. 

Time has also posted the cover of the magazine on their website, which can be seen below.

Several media organizations have also reported the same that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was named as the “Person of the Year” by Time’s Magazine.

Next, we also went through the archives of the previous year’s Magazine covers for TIME but we could not find the same cover showing Julian Assange. Thus, it is clear that the viral image on social media is digitally edited. Below you can see the comparison between the viral image and original published image.

Further, we also found several websites like this where people can create fake magazine cover, which can be easily edited. 

Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found the claim circulating with the viral image on social media to be False and digitally altered. TIME Magazine has not announced Julian Assange as the ‘Person of the Year’. The image is digitally created. Originally, TIME Magazine has announced Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as the ‘Person of the Year’ for 2021.

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