New set, new host ... but not much has changed at the ABC’s Media Watch under Linton Besser

Paul Barry’s successor Linton Besser signalled that, as it has in the past, MediaWatch will continue to attempt to keep journalists contained within Green Left ideological guard rails.

New Media Watch host Linton Besser. Picture: ABC

When I took a call asking me to watch the first episode of MediaWatch for the year I thought it must have come a few weeks late. Paul Barry presented his last episode on December 2nd and since then I’ve hosted my show for a couple of weeks, been to Adelaide for a week, had a three week family holiday in the US, flown back to Sydney for my first week of the year on Sky News, gone back to Washington DC to cover inauguration week, and then hosted another week back in Australia – I need a holiday already and MediaWatch has only just begun!

Anyway, even with the program’s new opening titles, set and host, not much has changed. Except, I guess, we have lost the supercilious smugness, and British accent.

With shots of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch in the opener, it was clear the program was not going to lose sight of its favourite targets, and The Daily Telegraph gave new host Linton Besser a loosener in the slot outside off stump which he readily dispatched to the boundary.

The paper made a numerical error about family reunion visas issued to the relatives of asylum seekers who arrived by boat, inadvertently turning 2158 into 21,581. Breakfast television, other media and Shadow Home Affairs Minister Senator James Patterson all commented on the story and therefore, inadvertently, the incorrect and much higher number.

(Although I was not mentioned in the report, I am certain I used the figure in on-air discussions on the day of publication and was not aware it was wrong until yesterday.) The Tele corrected the number online but this was a clear and embarrassing blunder - it did not change the relevant facts, although inflating the figure tenfold probably elevated the outrage.

The error provided the perfect opportunity for Besser to slap News Corp and other news media in his first program. Keep in mind he could hardly be too forthright in his criticism having once had a book he co-authored pulped because of a damaging mistake.

“21,000 permanent visas? … the tabloids were off by a factor of 10.

So just how did they get it so wrong?” #MediaWatchpic.twitter.com/EsrmeWZMiS

— Media Watch (@ABCmediawatch) February 3, 2025

Besser is a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist and long-time ABC reporter who has filed for Four Corners and served a stint as European correspondent. He is a journalism insider, winning awards and signing up with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism.

“When I started in journalism,” he told Crikey, “to get a copy of The New York Times was difficult, and now it’s part of my daily reading habit.” So much for a diversity of perspectives, if ever we worry Besser is captured by the green Left indulgence at the ABC, we can rest assured that he broadens his mind by reading some green Left indulgence in The New York Times.

Besser tried hard not to betray any green Left bent on his first night. But he could not help himself on the visa story (the mere mention of border security sees the liberal Left lose all capacity for reason).

Former Media Watch host Paul Barry.

Attempting cheekiness, Besser said there was “nothing wrong with News Corp and the federal opposition gunning hard on border security - after all it has worked for them in the past.” Boom, boom.

In just a couple of seconds, all is revealed. Like the rest of them at the ABC, his predecessor included, it seems Besser cannot be rational on this topic.

We know this type and how they have failed to learn, even over two decades of repeated border security errors. To them, border security is not a real issue, but rather a political ploy of the Right.

The 1200 deaths at sea, tens of thousands in detention, chaos, trauma and unfairness to refugees who apply properly; none of that seems to matter. What matters to the liberal Left is that they cannot conceive of how to enforce borders, and instead of working out the problem, they choose to demonise conservatives and anyone else who thinks borders and immigration control matter.

So with his one flippant remark, Besser signalled that nothing has changed. As it has in the past, MediaWatch still will attempt to keep journalists contained within Green Left ideological guard rails.

The rest of the show was similarly predictable. It lamented the axing of the local Nine News bulletin in Darwin, something we can all agree on.

There was another slap at the ABC where one of the Chaser boys (who surely must have boys and girls of their own by now) Chas Licciardello was singled out for using ABC resources to record and plug his commercial podcast.

“But Chas Licciardello hasn’t just been using the ABC to produce and promote his own podcast… We believe that in pumping up your podcast on national TV, and pushing merch on an ABC Facebook page, you’ve been in violation of a swathe of rules.”#MediaWatchpic.twitter.com/eFzGrIeA3K

— Media Watch (@ABCmediawatch) February 3, 2025

There is nothing MediaWatch loves more than pretending it can turn the blowtorch on the ABC by focusing on someone trying to make a buck out of it. You know, the ugly temptations of commercialism corrupting the abstemious billion-dollars-a-year public broadcaster.

That after all, is a very safe play within the walls of the ABC. It is much safer than critiquing the ABC’s coverage of the Middle East, its parroting of Hamas propaganda and downplaying of Islamist terrorism against Israel. It is much safer than exposing the ABC’s misleading coverage of Donald Trump and so-called Russian collusion, or its manipulation of video and audio to frame our soldiers as war criminals. It is much safer than tackling the ABC’s ideological monoculture or endless expansion into puerile digital crevices.

Yet for all that, Besser finished by undercutting his own exposure of Chas’s podcast breaches, signing off with a lame joke while holding a Linton Besser podcast mug. Presumably, this was to take the edge off his criticism of a colleague, enable the ABC to laugh it off and make sure nobody came down too hard on the Chaser boy – the Chaser boys are, after all, a protected species, like Bluey, the Greens and the Teals.