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Letter: Contributing to a healthy democracy

While we are grateful for the indefinite suspension of the glass factory, I did not want this moment to pass without acknowledging the valuable work done by Chris Montanini and the Beacon Herald team in their excellent coverage of this story.

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While we are grateful for the indefinite suspension of the glass factory, I did not want this moment to pass without acknowledging the valuable work done by Chris Montanini and the Beacon Herald team in their excellent coverage of this story.

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As we all know, our local and traditional print media have been decimated in recent decades by the unregulated internet when mega tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter have been stealing traditional media’s content without compensating the creators. This has also been happening in the music industry for decades. Much of their revenue leaves not only the community, but also the country.

Additionally, they have been draining away advertising revenue which the traditional media relies on to employ thousands of people who would undertake vast research and fact checking as a matter of professional responsibility in order to bring those stories to the public.

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In an era when our democracies are under attack by fake news and disinformation which emanate from these large tech companies, we are encouraged to defend our democracies at home by supporting our local and broader media outlets which are held accountable by national regulators without commercial interests.

Timothy Snyder, professor at Yale University, reminds us how vital our local media is in defending democracy at home.

I would invite those who share this position to write their MP to encourage our federal government to bring in stricter regulation and accountability to these companies, which will hopefully allow our local and domestic media to flourish once again.

We thank the Beacon for its good work in keeping the community informed and for contributing to a healthy democracy.

Loreena McKennitt CM, OM, CD, Stratford

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