Stand your ground.

This isn’t about your rights in a self-defense situation. No, this is a message to fellow journalists, journalists in print and broadcast media who might on occasion and even frequently feel beaten. They are beaten down by those who spew the mantra “fake news,” “you’re a lousy reporter” and, in some cases, worse.

Let’s not deny or obscure the facts. The field of journalism is suffering. While TV news outlets might be – or, at least, appear to be – on firmer platforms, newspaper journalists have watched as time and time again their platform seems more like the trap door of a scaffold as newspaper newsrooms are gutted and jobs are lost.

Some of us no doubt have considered following fellow journalists who entered a new life, one that lets them continue writing – only, the writing they craft very often is spin, PR news releases and feel-good stories for their employers. Something is lost in the process. They become a shadow of their former selves as they let loose those qualities that initially drove them to the profession. Truth and justice take a backseat to more reasonable work hours, having more personal time and free weekends and, yes, likely a better paycheck and benefits. Shedding their former selves can be easily rationalized.

While many large and small newspapers continue to silence their presses and cease to cover their communities, while TV corporations cave to government pressure and pull stories before they air for fear of reprisal, there remain journalists who, with the full support of those who sign their paychecks, continue to dig, to investigate and serve as the people’s watchdogs.

Sometimes they are appreciated and thanked. Other times they continue to be maligned with personal attacks, largely on social media posts that contain their stories.

Journalism is hard work and a job that requires a thick skin. The councilmember or school board member who treated a journalist as if he or she were a fellow parishioner at church can and will in an instant turn on that person because of a story and wish them to burn in Hell.

If that journalist can hold his or her head high, knowing that the story was written with balance, is built upon facts and is above reproach, he or she can sleep well at night.

Really, that is what is needed and all that can be asked. We need journalists who will serve the public as watchdogs of governments, school boards, law enforcement agencies. Journalists are the ones who can and will devote the time to investigate wrongdoing, who will file the Freedom of Information Acts and pore over thousands of pages of information to unearth truths on behalf of the public. They might not have the full support of all readers and listeners, but those people, the naysayers, are likely the more vocal ones while the often-silent majority truly appreciates the work.

I know. Often it seems the majority consists of the ones who lob the insults and call journalists purveyors of fake news and so on. But stand your ground. If you’re doing your job correctly, honestly and for all the right reasons, be resolved to continue in your chosen career. Yours is an honorable profession. In the process you might cause more than a little stir but remember what the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis said about making “good trouble.”

This is Sunshine Week, a week set aside each year to remind people of the necessary work journalists do in pulling away the blackout curtain many elected and appointed officials try to operate behind. This is the week to remind people that without solid investigative journalists government transparency will fade and eventually become opaque. It is a week to remind people that journalists hold these elected and appointed officials accountable to them, the public.

We are fresh off the South Carolina Press Association’s annual meeting and awards banquet in which our works were reviewed and rewarded by our peers in a neighboring state. This was a time of celebration, of acknowledgement that, indeed, the work we do really does matter and must continue to matter.

Keep those accolades top of mind, especially when you feel beaten down. Get back up, knowing that what you do is important to the very people who read and hear your work.

Get back up and stand your ground. Let the sunshine keep pouring in – this week and every week.

Richard S. Whiting is Freedom of Information Chair for the S.C. Press Association, which advocates for open government in South Carolina. Whiting retired in 2025 as executive editor of the Index-Journal in Greenwood.