The #RoboDebt Royal Commissioner thanks social media

And why that's important

I was very pleased last Thursday to be able to publish Ben Eltham’s deep dive into the matter of RoboDebt, and would not have been to do that without the financial support of paid subscribers to this site. As ever, thank you.

Ben’s article is an important piece, not just for its content, but as an example of how smaller sites like this, along with a network of social media platforms, can be used to fill a gap in reporting by the mainstream media.

We all know the failings of social media—the mainstream is at constant pains to remind us—but as some of us have been arguing for a long time, it also has its upside. Since the digitisation of news late last century transformed the media landscape and our basic relationship with the gathering and distribution of information; and changed forever the relationship between the media and their audience, legacy journalism has been having difficulty in coming to terms with its role in society.

It is within this context that the comments by Commissioner…