Bradley Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst accused of handing over troves of classified military records to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, has been overwhelmingly selected by Guardian readers to be the publication’s “person of the year” for 2012. Manning finished first in the vote with 70 percent. The runner-up was Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old education and women’s rights activist in Pakistan who was shot in the head by the Taliban.

Also making the list: feminist punk collective Pussy Riot, election predictor extraordinaire Nate Silver and Olympics opening ceremony mastermind Danny Boyle.

Digital Journal:

Each year the Guardian’s editors and readers nominate and vote for the person they consider to be most important and a headline-maker for the year.

…Nominated by a reader, mhenri, Manning, who is in military prison and undergoing pretrial hearings for the release of classified documents to WikiLeaks, including the “Collateral Murder” video, showing civilians and Reuters journalists cut down by the US Military:

“Bradley Manning, who after blowing a very necessary whistle, has survived yet another year of cruel and unusual pretrial punishment at the hand of the US military, which was designed to break him psychologically….”

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— Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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