We're not the enemy of the people

Being a journalist was a thankless job well before Donald Trump started referring to the news media as the enemy of the people.

A report last year ranked newspaper reporter and broadcaster as the two worst jobs based on factors such as median salary and projected growth. Polls have found declining public support for journalists.

Journalists typically choose the profession because they love the work and believe in its value in making a positive difference. The vast majority of reporters take seriously the ethical obligations of the job and strive to be fair and put aside their personal biases. Newspaper reporters make mistakes like anyone else, but when they do they are publicly corrected for everyone to see.

Covering the White House is certainly different than being a cub reporter at a small paper, but the president’s attacks on the media undermine the work of everyone in the profession. When Trump repeatedly uses terms such as “fake news” and “enemy of the people” to discredit the media, some of the president’s supporters follow suit in attacking local reporters without justification.

Such attacks threaten the media's role as a government watchdog. Independent reporting is necessary to ensure government transparency, expose corruption and other wrongdoing, and inform the public about the consequences of the decisions made by their elected leaders.

At the national level these responsibilities have heightened importance at a time when Congress has largely abandoned its constitutional duty to act as a check on the president. But independent reporting is also needed on the local level to inform people about what is happening with their city, county and state governments, law enforcement agencies, schools and businesses, holding officials in these institutions accountable.

Today’s editorial was written in response to the Boston Globe's call for newspaper editorial boards across the country to comment on the dangers of the president's assault on the press. While we wrote recently about how Trump’s incendiary rhetoric threatens the safety of reporters, we thought it was important to join more than 200 papers today in calling for an end to his attacks on the media.

Unfortunately it is doubtful these words will make a difference to Trump or his most steadfast supporters. Some commenters on our last editorial on the subject just used the opportunity to attack The Sun as biased — perhaps not recognizing that editorials are opinion pieces meant to represent the views of The Sun’s editorial board members, not the paper's reporters.

The First Amendment protects the rights of both reporters and opinion writers to do their jobs. This right applied to the partisan press that was standard in the early days of our country through today, when reporters at papers such as The Sun work hard to be fair and professional.

Before you unfairly attack a reporter as biased, consider the seriousness with which they approach their job despite the low pay and long hours. You might not like what they report sometimes, but think of how government would operate without journalists acting as watchdogs.