For some time now our Media Glass House researchers have been posing themselves the question: Why do news organisations persist with court room sketch artists?

A few weeks back our MGH teams played a game among themselves by reviewing online news stories from the US to see who could guess which sketched portrait was meant to be Donald Trump during his recent trial in the Manhattan Criminal Court.

Right now they are having some fun trying to see which of them can accurately identify former federal ministerial staffer Bruce Lehrmann from sketches featured in ABC News Online stories of his current Toowoomba trial. (below)

Our MGH teams do wonder why we still need sketch artists in courts at all in the digital era, given the availability of so many ways to create life-like images, including through the use of artificial intelligence if you must. Plus the ABC’s stories carrying the sketches also featured actual snaps of the real person of interest taken outside the court.

Still, it all keeps our hardworking MGH staff amused.

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The question of identity again loomed large in our MGH team members’ minds when they chanced upon a website calling itself Glam Adelaide.

It describes itself as “Adelaide’s first positive news website, focusing on the best of South Australian events, news, businesses and more”.

One story it is running at the moment involves South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and his plans for reforming his state’s political donation laws. (below)

The item starts off correctly quoting the real Premier but then inexplicably introduces someone called “Premik Kiro” as Premier of South Australia. (below)

Our MGH teams would like to think that the error is not the result of a newsroom’s over-reliance on AI and is just a plain old simple human fuck-up.

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News Crap Australia’s national broadshit The Australian is often lambasted for being top heavy with Roman Catholic correspondents, columnists, and commentators.

To the best of our recollection it was Richard Ackland who labelled the self-important Murdoch organ as “the Catholic boys’ daily”.

Mr Ackland is a veteran journalist and lawyer who still pens acerbic columns and may be better known to our reader for having hosted the ABC TV’s Media Watch program for a couple of years towards the end of last century.

But how wrong he was, according to our MGH teams who use as evidence an “exclusive” in Monday’s edition of The Oz about an apparently unholy row within the Catholic Church in Australia over efforts by the church hierarchy to stop some priests saying Mass in Latin. (below)

Apparently that’s something that was no longer cool daddy-oh even way back in the swinging ’60s, and the powers that be are insisting that Latin is definitely out and should stay out, unlike a lot of the church hierarchy.

The reason our MGH teams say Mr Ackland was wrong in his description of The Oz is the fact that Monday’s item was penned by occasional contributor of Catholic Church-based yarns, Tess Livingstone.

So there Mr Ackland, our MGH researchers say, you are wrong. It’s actually a Catholic boys’ and girls’ daily.

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Our MGH researchers wanted to add a final note just in case The Bug reader starts to think this publication is engaged in some sort of sectarian vendetta.

No, they can assure our reader, it’s not. They do add that they are largely a bunch of atheists with zero religious allegiances.

They also want to make it clear that they wouldn’t mind one little bit if The Australian truly was a vibrant, moderate, and open-minded catholic daily as opposed to the dull, predictable, self-righteous, pontificating, judgemental, far-right wing Catholic kind.

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