Well, OK.
Still, I have to see this as either another cop-out on the part of Time or an illustration of the miserable job the media is doing of covering the things that really matter. I’ll bet very few people are even aware of what the Gates (Gateses) or Bono have done to even merit consideration, yet here they are Persons of the Year - “the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year’s news”. How many times have their activities made the headlines? (This is not a rhetorical question - I really don’t know.)
I don’t mean to diminish the good work these people have done, rather I’m just questioning how it can be that the people who “had the biggest effect on the year’s news” could have done so in such relatively obscurity.
Of course it’s possible that their activities have been splashed all over the papers, but that I passed those stories by in search of who Brad Pitt was banging at the moment.