LETTER

How we get less local news

 

The Bulletin has printed a lot of editorials and letters about the negative effects of governments ending their notices to the public and promotion of certain campaigns (like SARs, or assistance for seniors). It seems like all media have criticized our Liberal governments for switching their “advertising” to Google and Facebook, and away from local and Canadian media.

It seems this is all for the sake of appearing modern and youth-orientated. This is just Image Politics, it’s not informing the public at all.

We read everywhere that social media, Facebook especially, has been cooperating with companies and political campaigns to influence our personal decisions, I mean selling our private information to PR firms.

Now the US government (but not Quebec or Canada!) is investigating these social media mega-corporations. Here is what I read in the Guardian (UK): “What makes Facebook’s apparent mishandling of data so dangerous is the corporation’s power and reach over both the distribution and generation of news and information. Facebook is the way that most get their news. In 2017, it accounted for 26% of traffic (for news). Add Google, the figure is 70%.

“This has enabled them to steer readers to certain news publishers and away from others, in ways that increase Facebook’s earnings but can seriously weaken or even bankrupt well-established newspapers and magazines.” Why are our federal and Quebec governments supporting this? This is hard to believe.

This Guardian article continues, “Facebook exploits this to divert billions in advertising revenues away from trustworthy sources of news (local, I say) into its own coffers. Facebook now pockets roughly a quarter of all online and mobile advertising --- almost $40bn last year. The Dow Jones publisher said this diversion of advertising revenue is ‘killing news’.” Not just newspapers but our news. I don’t know how the Bulletin deals with this problem, but I do not wish to lose our only newspaper.

Do we really want the Trudeau new-agers doing this with our tax dollars?

Andy Black
Aylmer nord (This letter is condensed)