Pat Wright

And one thing is like, you know, there's that old saying, if it's not clear what the product is, like you might be the product.

And that's like really true, I think, in some of these spaces as well.

Well, depends what it is.

Like I try to engage in if there's criticism and it's in good faith.

Like I think of course you want to respond to it and sometimes it might be, you know, sometimes I've had people contact me and they've had, you know, pointed out something I've missed or they might have a really good point.

But a lot of it unfortunately, particularly on social media,

And if I'm being completely honest, like, and there's a lot of research about this, it's like predominantly women journalists who are targeted.

If you look at some of my colleagues, particularly at the ABC, have had some really horrendous trolling and things like this.

And so, yeah, I think there's a bit of, at the moment,

For some people, they're really taking a break from social media or opting out of it because of that.

It can be really toxic and it does really affect people's mental health and things like that.

Luckily in the space I work in, and I would say also because I'm a man as well, I don't get some of those kind of comments.

But, you know, at the same time, like definitely is a really big issue for people in the media as well.

And, like, I'm not trying to say here that people in the media shouldn't be criticised.

I think there is totally, we have a privilege, right, because we're publishing things, we're putting things out into, in public or on social media and we have a platform.

And so we need to be able to, I think it's completely reasonable that people are criticised, but also when things are like really personal or talking about people's appearances or, you know, talking about their personal lives, which happens quite a bit.

I think that's crossing the line there.

Like I say, like if it's something that's in good faith, I'll engage.

If it's not, I'm not going to waste my time responding to people.

Fair enough.