Biden, Harris jointly named Time's Person of the Year

NEW YORK • US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris have been jointly named Time magazine's 2020 Person of the Year.

They were chosen from a list of finalists that included the man Mr Biden vanquished at the polls - President Donald Trump.

The Democratic former vice-president and his running mate, a California senator whose election broke gender and racial barriers, together "offered restoration and renewal in a single ticket", Time said in a profile of the pair published online with its announcement on Thursday.

Following the most tumultuous US presidential campaign in modern times, waged in the throes of a deadly pandemic, economic devastation and a strife-torn national reckoning with racism, Mr Biden and Ms Harris prevailed in an election that drew the highest voter turnout in a century.

Time editor-in-chief and chief executive Edward Felsenthal credited the victors with succeeding in "an existential debate over what reality we inhabit".

"For changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are Time's 2020 Person of the Year."

He noted that it was the first time that the magazine had chosen to include the vice-president as a person of the year.

Mr Trump, the 45th US president and Time's 2016 Person of the Year - so honoured a month after his upset election victory as the Republican nominee that year - was among three other finalists in the running this year, Time said.

The two other finalists, both group candidates, were the healthcare workers battling the Covid-19 pandemic - which included the US' leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci - and participants in the racial justice movement sparked by the May 25 killing of Mr George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Time has noted that its selection process is not a popularity contest, however. Its choice reflects "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for better or worse".

Along with its Person of the Year honour, Time magazine named the Korean pop group BTS as its Entertainer of the Year, and it also crowned basketball star LeBron James as Athlete of the Year.

The tradition goes back to 1927, when Time named aviator Charles Lindbergh its first man of the year, as the honour was then called.

Last year, Time named Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg its person of the year, choosing her over US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr Trump and the Hong Kong protesters.

REUTERS, NYTIMES