Media Watch host has had another Barry of an episode

Media Watch host Paul Barry. Picture: ABC

Every now and then we need to check in on Paul Barry and Media Watch to ensure a bit of transparency. This is the most expensive and indulgent 15 minutes of television produced in this country each week.

Barry is paid upwards of $200,000, with a support staff of up to 10. But, rather than use this ridiculous over-allocation of resources to seriously scrutinise media in this country, the ABC uses it to run deceptive and dishonest ideological campaigns against chosen targets.

Instead of being a watchdog, Media Watch is the epitome of media malfeasance. Media Watch misrepresents the facts, ­ignores fairness and objectivity, flouts the ABC charter and indulges the ideological obsessions that it just happens to share with most others at the ABC.

I have detailed Media Watch’s delinquency in this column before and, in his Herald Sun blog, Andrew Bolt has forensically dismantled some of its deceptions. But Paul Barry and Media Watch are untouchable as any ABC lifer. Barry and Media Watch have campaigned against the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 and attacked those reporting positively about it. Why? Well, it seems, because Donald Trump has promoted it.

Yep, it is as silly as that — Barry’s Twitter feed resembles that of an undergraduate green-left activist, rather than a world-wise journalist. Still, the ABC can be as lowbrow as it likes, the real worry is that it is often misleading.

When Barry criticised me in April for noting that Australian doctors, dentists and pharmacists had been stocking up on hydroxychloroquine in case of COVID-19 infections, he deliberately left out the fact that the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia had warned this risked leaving patients (reliant on the drug for lupus or rheumatoid arthritis) in short supply. Barry didn’t mention I had interviewed the society’s chief about this issue, and he held back the fact his researchers had received a written response from the society detailing these concerns. Barry deliberately excluded this information from his hit job because the facts did not suit his narrative.

Barry and Media Watch also used a short quote from Professor Peter Collignon in an effort to downplay hopes for the drug but failed to mention he had spoken positively about it in live interviews during his weekly pandemic updates on my program. Nor did Barry mention I had also interviewed Nobel laureate Professor Peter Doherty about the practical hopes for his and other drugs. It seems Barry doesn’t always include facts that interrupts his crusade.

Barry and Media Watch failed to even mention news I had shared with my viewers that two clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine were being undertaken through the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne and the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Barry excluded all this information while suggesting that I might be misleading people — it is that brazen and ironic.

Yet it gets even worse. Remember when the media went nuts over Trump talking about research into disinfectant and sunlight on COVID-19? Barry was one of those silly enough to characterise this as the President recommending “injecting them (patients) with disinfectant” — just childish stuff.

Barry said this had caused “shock, amazement and uproar” in the media “except from Chris Kenny” — suggesting I had endorsed the way Trump had handled the issue when, in the very item he was quoting from, I describe Trump’s intervention as “bizarre”, had a chuckle about it, and said “he’d save himself a lot of trouble, I reckon, if he left the medical commentary to the experts”.

The dig at me is a minor matter, but it goes to the deceit; Barry is happy to misrepresent people to make his partisan point. My sin was to be critical of both Trump and the media; this is too nuanced for Barry, who seeks a binary ideological narrative.

Ever the advocate, Barry took to Twitter to circulate and endorse an article by The Lancet, based on obscure sources, criticising the use of hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus patients. The Lancet have subsequently retracted that article and issued a statement explaining it has no confidence in the data upon which it was based.

We will have to wait to see whether Media Watch examines this embarrassment or ignores it. But on past performances we simply cannot expect transparency.

Barry was at it again last week, on his favourite topic of climate change. He ran comments by me and others criticising the climate focus at the bushfire royal commission. Presuming to summarise my views, he said I was “now prepared to accept” global warming might make bushfires worse, clearly suggesting I had changed my mind without ever showing I had said anything different.

Barry didn’t include my arguments against a climate focus at the inquiry: that since we have always faced catastrophic bushfires the precautions against increasing risks are well known; and Australia cannot unilaterally change the climate anyway. Barry’s program is directed at attacking News Corp media and right-of-centre standpoints. He is given a salary to ignore facts he does not like.