Linton Besser does not think Media Watch is broken, and consequently, he doesn’t want to fix it.
“The honest truth is I don’t want to break it, the formula works really well and has for a long time,” he said on Monday before the broadcast of his first show as host.
Linton Besser: A bloodhound’s nose for a story.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
The Monday night program is an Australian broadcasting institution – a tasty mix of schadenfreude and media analysis beloved by viewers who want to see journalists in glass houses have stones thrown at them, so to speak.
Institutions, cultural, governmental and otherwise, are currently being disrupted all over the world, so it was comforting that in his first outing as the program’s new host, Besser displayed reverence for Media Watch tradition.
He began the show on solid ground, with a drill-down into a dodgy set of Daily Telegraph numbers – a beat-up about asylum seekers allegedly exploiting visas for family members, which was duly rolled out across the News Corp tabloids nationally.
The story stated there had been 21,000 visas of this kind given out by the Albanese government. The figure was wrong by a factor of 10 (the real number is about 2000, according to Besser’s impeccable research).
Besser forensically shamed each program – including television and radio shows broadcast by Nine (the publisher of this masthead) that faithfully repeated the phony figure.
He spread the queasy embarrassment nice and wide.
The Tele’s eventual correction, Besser drily pointed out, was placed in such a small and discreet spot in the fringes of the news pages that it was nearly invisible.
Next, he tackled the worrying cancellation by Nine of its Northern Territory television news bulletin, which disappeared in a puff of smoke overnight.
Now, Northern Territorians get their news beamed in from Queensland, which (croc attacks aside), is of marginal relevance to their daily lives.
We are knee-deep in an age of shrinking newsrooms and smashed-up media business models. This structural disruption is the major media story of our time.
Besser pointed out that while we are used to seeing regional and local news bulletins and newspapers fold, this is the first time an entire capital city has been abandoned by a national media company.
Blurred lines
Finally, he had some fun with an ABC show – the kind of blue-on-blue attack that former host Paul Barry said made for awkward trips to the staff canteen.
Through meticulous cross-referencing, Besser made the case that one of the hosts of Planet America (Chas Licciardello) has rather blurred the line between public broadcasting and private hustling by promoting his personal podcast (and related merch) on the ABC Facebook page.
Besser knows how to deliver a line – he has a lovely dry wit.
But underneath the final gag (where he drank from a coffee cup advertising himself) was a serious point about the shifting ethical obligations of media professionals in a fragmented journalistic landscape.
When individuals are both a “personal brand” and an employee, what duties are owed to whom? And whose interests are being protected?
Besser is an outstanding, award-winning journalist (previously employed by The Sydney Morning Herald) with rigid integrity and a bloodhound’s nose for a story.
There is no question about whose interests he is there to protect – the punters.
He now helms a show that has existed since 1989 as a vigilant guardsman of journalistic integrity, ethics and even truth, which is no small task in the post-truth landscape.
It’s a huge job, but Besser’s shoulders are broad enough for it.
And if his first show is a good measure, he might have to start brewing his own coffee – the ABC canteen may no longer be a safe space for him.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.