Australian Finance Podcast
Avoiding scams & decrypting financial news (with ABC journalist Pat Wright)
13 Jun 2021
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Please remember that all of the information in this podcast episode is limited to general information only. That means the information is not specific to you, your needs, goals, or objectives. So you should seek the advice of a licensed and trusted financial professional before acting on the information.
And before you acquire or apply for a financial product, please read the PDS or product disclosure statement, which should be available on the issuer's website. Lastly, please keep in mind that past performance is not indicative of future performance. Kate, welcome to this episode of the Australian Finance Podcast. Good to be back, Owen.
We have a very special guest with us today, Pat Wright from the ABC. Pat, how are you doing? Really good. How are you guys going? Very good, mate. Very good. Yeah, we're stoked to have you in recording with us. We're here in Melbourne at our usual haunt, which is Flinders Lane. Mm-hmm. And today we're talking about deciphering the financial news and who better to be our field guide than yourself.
We've got a heap of questions here about how we can make better decisions in terms of getting information into our consciousness, how we make decisions based on that information, how we verify it, etc., Let's start with a bit about you. Tell us a bit about yourself, what you do day to day and why you do it.
Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me, guys. Pleasure to be here. I'm a big fan. So I guess a bit about me. So I'm living in Geelong now. I spend a lot of time living in Melbourne. And I've been a journalist for about nine years now. So I started with the ABC in 2012. And that was towards the end of my, just was in the third year of my uni course, journalism.
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Chapter 2: How can we identify biases in financial news?
you know, financial topics and things like this. I'm thinking about some commercial comparison sites. They do stories about credit card debt or refinancing your mortgage. But then if you look at the bottom of the article, it might be a link to their services or something that they get some affiliate marketing from. And
You know, I think that's just something to be cautious about, I guess, if you're around this kind of stuff. 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.
And I know so often, especially because I do follow the ABC on Facebook, people don't even read the article. They just read the headline and make some insane comments about what they think the article is probably about. So it must be quite challenging. This is just sort of throwing this out of left field, but how do you deal with sort of that feedback from consumers?
Because you're doing everything online and it just comes so quickly. Do you just not read the Facebook comments?
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.
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