…for journos to stop beating up yarns!

Just how many of Scott Morrison’s parliamentary colleagues are calling on him to resign from Parliament over the shock revelations he held five secret extra ministries during the 46th Parliament?

One? Two? Twelve?

The answer clearly is more than one, if the reports of a number of mainstream media outlets over the past 24 hours are to be believed.

Let’s start with the online news site, InQueensland, whose yarn yesterday (at top) talked of “calls” – plural – being made for ScumMo to go!

The problem with that? The entire yarn mentions only one of Morrison’s colleagues calling for his head – former Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews. No-one else. So that’s one, then. No mention at all of other colleagues calling for Smoko to go but who “asked not to be named”.

Let’s roll forward then to ABC’s 7.30 last night where host Sarah Ferguson tells former PM John Howard during their interview that “calls” – plural – had been made by Smirko’s “colleagues” – plural – for him to resign as the member for Cook.

At the end of the program, Ferguson made a to-camera clarification: only ONE colleague of Morrison’s had come out publically to call for his resignation. Good on her for doing that and clarifying her error.

Let’s complete the 24-hour cycle with this morning’s ABC News Breakfast program where both co-hosts talked of “calls” – plural – being made for The Liar from the Shire to go!

The MGH didn’t take in the entire program so we don’t know if there was any clarification of that number or whether other Liberal pollies had called “off the record” for the former #CrimeMinister to fuck off. We’ve checked the ABC’s online news site and we’ve been unable to progress the number of @scottiefrommarketing’s colleagues calling openly for his head from the solitary ONE.

In all of the above reports, if there were colleagues making such calls off the record, that should have been mentioned.

Otherwise, to the MGH, all these examples smell of your basic journalism beat-up. Or a deplorable lack of maths and an inability to recognise that ONE is not a plural number.

Or, sadly, both.

***

Did the MGH hear Jason Clare correctly this morning on ABC News Breakfast?

We’re fairly sure we heard him say that governors-general have always followed the advice of the prime minister of the day.

Rather than call for his immediate expulsion from the Labor Party, we’re going to be very lenient and take into account that Jason was only three in December 1975.

***

Seeing the MGH mentioned ABC News Breakfast before, some advice to the show’s producers.

We appreciate the show is taped in Melbourne and aerial ping-pong reigns supreme there but in three consecutive crosses to sports presenter Tony Armstrong on Monday, he covered weekend AFL matches and nothing else.

Yet at that very moment Cameron Smith was on the other side of the world vying to become the world’s No 1 golfer and a heap of exciting NRL matches had been played over the weekend.

Look, we all know Tony is witty and charming and played AFL himself and there are some younger staff members at The Bug who want to have his children but … for fuck’s sake …. THREE crosses in a row more or less on the same bloody AFL match!

News Breakfast is supposed to be a national show, right?