Our dedicated reader would know that our Media Glass House researchers have regularly taken aim at News Crap Australia outlets for presenting news stories accompanied by headlines which present some claims as facts.

Our MGH teams always wonder why it is so difficult to include a couple of inverted commas around a few words that express contested claims rather than cold hard facts.

One of the chief offenders is the daily Liberal National Party turdbloid newsletter produced by the Bowen Hills branch of the LNP in Brisbane.

Otherwise known as The Courier-Mail, the publication regularly offers up examples of this careless – or perhaps deliberate – practice of omitting a few minor punctuation marks and in the process turning claims into fact in headlines and in readers’ minds.

Often the practice is seen in political stories, usually anti-Labor ones, but this week The Courier-Mail showed that nobody is safe from its sloppiness.

On Monday it was the nation’s banks that copped it in a story that was previewed on the Murdoch turdbloid’s front page. (main picture)

There it was a clear statement that “banks are heartless”. Not an opinion, but a fact, apparently.

The headings on the full story inside (below) sort of tied the claim to a report by financial watchdog the Australian Securities and Investments Commission suggesting customers who get into deep financial water sometimes received little or no help from their bank.

Now our MGH teams hold no great affection for big banks, but even they should be treated fairly in a headline.

On Tuesday it was back to politics with a statement of fact in a Courier headline that the Albanese Government’s jobs policies had failed. (below)

And who was making the claim of failure? Opposition frontbencher Michaelia Cash. So a bit of a blatant leg-up to the Libs there.

On Wednesday The Courier-Mail ran a big yarn citing comments by Queensland’s Labor Party Premier Steven Miles on the impact interstate and overseas migration is having on service delivery. (below)

Mr Miles has asked the federal government to lower overseas migration so that states like his can catch up on the backlog of roads and public transport services needed to cater for a growing population.

Nowhere in his reported comments did he use the expression “road to ruin”, and if he had, it should have been in quotation marks.

But oddly, that expression is one bandied around by the Premier’s LNP opponents.

The very same page of the LNP newsletter… sorry, The Courier-Mail that carried that story showed how easy it is to throw in some quotation marks where necessary if you are not deliberately skewing coverage. (below)

The same edition of the Courier illustrated how confusing it can become when quotation marks are absent.

Take the story below. Its headline is based on comments in the story by model-turned-actor Charlee Fraser who has a role in a recently released feature film.

But if readers took it literally they would think the comments came from the bylined reporter Jonathan Moran. As far as our MGH researchers are aware he didn’t have a role in the film.

Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

Follow The Bug Online on WordPress.com