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Letter: Are our freedoms being threatened?

Editor, Gazette-Journal: Will we notice when Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech has gone?  What might the signals be? Could the signs be belittling, demeaning, threatening or attacking the credibility of long-standing trusted institutions that fact-check their stories? Do charges of “Fake News” intimidate and reduce candor? Could it be restricting some news organizations from political rallies, press conferences or meetings with foreign dignitaries? How do these behaviors bode for openness and transparency of a democracy? Timothy Snyder, a survivor of Hitler’s Germany and author of “On Tyranny—Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century,” writes, “The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century …” Snyder reminds us to: “Believe in truth. To abandon fa...

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