Surprise: Donald Trump is not TIME’s Person of the Year
And neither is reader poll winner Bernie Sanders.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is TIME’s Person of the Year for 2015, TIME editor Nancy Gibbs announced on the TODAY show Wednesday morning.
[fragment number=0]
[fragment number=1]
Merkel is a German politician and former research scientist who has been Chancellor of Germany since 2005 and the leader of the Christian Democratic Union since 2000—the first woman to hold either office. And now, she’s the fourth woman to have a solo Person of the Year title.
“In a world where world leaders were tested all throughout the year, no one was tested like she was,’’ Gibbs said on the morning show, citing how Merkel handled the economic crisis this past summer, the refugee crisis this fall, and now the “return of terror to Europe.’’
Earlier this week Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate won a TIME readers’ poll for the elite title, but Sanders wasn’t even on the short list for the official Person of the Year. It came down to eight final names: Merkel; Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, a leader of ISIS; Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump; Black Lives Matter activists; Iran president Hassan Rouhani’ Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber’ Caitlyn Jenner, who sparked a nationwide conversation about gender identity when she came out as a trans woman; and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
TIME’s Person of the Year has been around since 1927 (though it was called “Man of the Year,’’ with a few exceptions, until 1999), and doesn’t necessarily represent the “best’’ person of the year, but someone who has been the most influential or who “best represents the news of the year.’’ TIME’s Deputy Managing Editor Radhika Jones described the criteria on Time.com as “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.’’
Read the full story on Angela Merkel in TIME here.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com