Sky News Australia, October 17, 2020

Sky News host Rowan Dean says the same “bungling left-wing bureaucrats” who ruined hotel quarantine should not be able to ban and criminalise the already-approved Hydroxychloroquine.

Mr Dean took aim at ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry who he said uses his weekly 15-minute segment to “kindly spruik” programs on Sky News.

“He uses all sorts of imaginative ways to promote not only this show Outsiders, but also the Bolt Report, Paul Murray Live, and other great Sky shows,” Mr Dean said.

In recent episodes of the program, Mr Barry has maligned Mr Dean and fellow Sky News host Andrew Bolt for their respective segments on the potential drug treatment of COVID-19, Hydroxychloroquine.

“The reality is the only rubbish in the debate about the efficacy or otherwise of Hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID comes from Paul Barry himself,” Mr Dean said.

“Political interference in any drug not only goes against ethical protocols going back to World War 2 but it violates the sanctity of the doctor patient relationship.

“All the evidence’ is not against hydroxychloroquine as Paul Barry blithely asserts, only the evidence Barry himself chooses to present.

“Sure, there are studies that argue against hydroxychloroquine, but there is indisputably a mountain of evidence in favour of the drug in specific circumstances and a mountain of evidence that many lives have been saved.”