John Barton, former journalist and TV presenter, has died peacefully at age 73.
He started as a cadet reporter at The Brisbane Telegraph in the late 1960s. In the 1970s he moved to television, to ABC‘s This Day Tonight, working in Perth and then back in Brisbane. When TDT was axed in 1978, Barton and a number of his colleagues moved across to rival QTQ9 to begin the local Brisbane current affairs show Today Tonight.
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Today Tonight continued until 1985, along the way winning four TV Week Logie Awards for Most Popular Program In Queensland.
He claimed that he was virtually exiled from Queensland media after he broke two controversial stories. He told TV Week in 1992: “The first story was about how (Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen) financed his farm and the second was about (QTQ9 board chairman) Sir Edward Lyons’ betting activities. And later when Lyons was sacked from the board, all of us (Today Tonight) got the axe too.”
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He was thrown a lifeline by Network Ten in Sydney, as executive producer on Good Morning Australia and host of Business Week. This was followed by a move to co-host Seven‘s short-lived business news program TVAM with Kay McGrath.
By the early 1990s he was working as a freelancer, including a stint as a reporter and relief host on ABC’s Landline.
He later moved to Kuala Lumpur as director of sports at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union from 2002 to 2013.
John Barton is survived by his three sons, Sam, Fraser and Hugh Barton.
Source: Brisbane Times, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. The Sunday Mail / Scene On TV, 1 May 1988. TV Week, 6 December 1992.
