The Media Watch host, Paul Barry, is “hanging up the mic” after 11 years and will leave the ABC show in December.
The veteran journalist is the show’s longest-serving presenter after taking on the role permanently in 2013.
The ABC is yet to announce a new host for the 15-minute show, which runs on Mondays after Four Corners. A spokesperson said that will be confirmed be later this year.
“The award-winning journalist will leave the show with a track record of independent commentary, analysis and robust discussion about the media industry and its ethics – or lack thereof,” a spokesperson for the ABC said.
Barry thanked the show’s viewers, saying “I’m sure the program will go on to great things without me”.
“It’s a great privilege to host Media Watch and I’ve enjoyed it enormously. But I’ve been in the hot seat for 11 years and it’s time to give someone else a go,” Barry said in a statement.
The presenter also hosts Media Bites, an arm of Media Watch that sees Barry cast a critical eye over the media industry and which is published on social media and the ABC’s website.
Yup. I'm hanging up the mic at the end of this year. But lots of fun to be had before then. https://t.co/dTzST7Wgwh
— Paul Barry (@TheRealPBarry) June 13, 2024
Barry’s fierce criticism of the media industry, including the ABC, hasn’t been without blowback.
Last year, the ABC ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, dismissed a complaint against Media Watch from the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age over a segment Barry hosted on the paper’s controversial “Red Alert” series.
The series by the Nine-owned papers had focused on an apparent “threat of war” with China, and sparked criticism from the former prime minister Paul Keating and foreign affairs specialists.
In 2022, comments on Media Watch’s X profile were disabled for the first time after the program aired a segment that canvassed whether the ABC’s coverage of transgender issues has been influenced by the broadcaster’s corporate partnership with an LGBTQ+ community group.
The segment angered journalists in the broadcaster’s news division, including RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas, as well as Stop Everything hosts Benjamin Law and Beverley Wang.
