No matter who wins on Election Day, the nation’s newsies will be left playing a losing hand.

My sisters and brothers of the Fourth Estate have taken a brutal beating in these treacherous political times. News organizations and journalists are being blamed for everything from inspiring assassination attempts to manufacturing “fake news” to swinging the Nov. 5 presidential election.

We are despised, mistrusted and ridiculed at every turn. As a result, our legacy media are crumbling.

American newspapers are vanishing at an alarming rate, according to a study just out from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

The research by the school’s Medill Local News Initiative found that 127 newspapers went under in the last year — more than two per week. The nation has lost 3,200 newspapers, more than one-third, since 2005. That trend has inspired more “news deserts” — that is, communities that suffer from having no local source for news.

The study found there are 208 counties across the country without any news source, up from 204 last year, the research shows. Another 1,563 counties have only one news source. Altogether, that means almost 55 million people in the United States have limited or no access to local news.

And more than 7,000 newspaper jobs disappeared between 2022 and 2023, compared with a few hundred the year before. Broadcast media are also losing audiences to massive cable cutting and the streaming mania.

Meanwhile, traditional staples such as editorial board endorsements, once sought by candidates and valued by news consumers, are going by the wayside.

Last week, the owners of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times triggered the ire of readers when they decided that their paper’s editorial boards would not endorse a 2024 presidential candidate for the first time in decades.

That move has spurred more than 200,000 Washington Post readers to cancel their digital subscriptions. That number “represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well,” according to NPR.

Several Post editorial staffers quit in protest. Many believe the owners of these Democrat-leaning newspapers ducked the endorsements for fear of retribution from former President Donald Trump.

Billionaire newspaper owners, it seems, are cowed by the presumed power of a second Trump term.

Still, I am not canceling my subscription. I will not add to the deluge of assaults on my profession. We must build back up, not tear down.

There has been a long slide of credibility in my profession. The trust has been broken.

The presidential race has ramped up the peril, according to a report released Oct. 1, “What the U.S. election could mean for journalists and global press freedom,” from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Interviews with journalists, lawyers and press freedom advocates revealed that “media workers are confronting challenges that include an increased risk of violence, arrest, on- and offline harassment, legal battles, and criminalization,” report author Katherine Jacobsen writes.

She cites other concerns: “Political polarization, the legacy of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, and a lack of police accountability for their treatment of journalists emerged as additional causes for concern.”

“It was a wakeup call to the fragility of our democracy and trust in institutions — like journalism, like the government — that’s been eroding for a very long time,” photojournalist Amanda Andrade-Rhoades said.

Assaults on journalists in the United States are skyrocketing, jumping by more than 50% this year, as compared with 2023, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a nonpartisan news website and database that monitors such incidents.

The dark and angry demonization of the media in politics, courtesy of Trump and his allies, is a chief instigator.

“I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I win the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events,” the former president wrote last month in a Truth Social post.

He attacked the iconic CBS magazine show “60 Minutes” for editing one of Harris’ answers in an interview, though that is a routine and accepted practice. At a recent campaign rally in Arizona, Trump resurrected an attack from his 2016 campaign, when he charged that journalists are “the enemy of the people.”

ABC News quoted Trump declaring to a “jeering” crowd: “They’re the enemy of the people. They are. I’ve been asked not to say that. I don’t want to say it. And some day, they’re not going to be the enemy of the people, I hope.”

When news organizations attempt to fact check their lies at speech, debates and rallies, Trump and running mate U.S. Sen. JD Vance have bitterly complained.

Trump’s July appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago kicked off more than an hour late, reportedly because the campaign would not allow him to take the stage unless the journalists group agreed to refrain from fact-checking his comments. NABJ held firm, and prepared to cancel the event, until the Trump campaign relented.

In this election year, misinformation and distrust are winning out over facts, figures, reality and truth. Social media and intentional misinformation campaigns are fanning those flames.

Win or lose, Trump’s MAGA movement will continue its efforts to discredit and threaten journalists everywhere.

The threats to the media are all around, and they affect not only my colleagues and the news organization they work for; they also threaten your freedom, our democracy and everything that you value.

How much longer will journalists be there to fight back?

Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist.