Some of you in Bugland might laugh at this assertion but Australia’s No1 family newszine always strives to be fair and accurate and especially so in this column that puts the blowtorch to the nation’s mainstream mediocre.

And yet we nearly made a terrible mistake overnight with a mid-week yarn by news.com. au’s Samantha Maiden that would have wrongly put her in a very bad light … and we blame Twitter for our near-miss from what would have been a dreadful display of very sloppy journalism. Yes, Twitter …. the platform we have a lot of time for, despite its faults, seeing the MSM is so fucking shockingly bad right now.

Here’s what happened. We let Twitter outrage frame our original view of what Maiden was trying to achieve when she ran that online newscorpse piece on the cost of the fancy, designer clothing Jodie Haydon, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s girlfriend has been wearing of late.

As you can see (above) from just a few of the Twitter posts that Maiden’s yarn provoked, a fairly widespread view was that it was a classic case of spiteful, shit newscorpse “journalism” having a totally unfair dig at Haydon’s choice of clobber; one that perhaps left open the question: who the fuck’s paying for all this!

The bottomline is that those Twitterers got it largely wrong. And we almost fell into the same trap.

While it’s true that Maiden urges some wise political caution on the part of Haydon given the cost of living pressures now being felt by many Australians, Maiden twice makes the point Haydon is paying for the clothes.

Much of the article talks about the designers behind the frocks Haydon has been wearing to funerals in London and Tokyo with some fashion industry praise for Haydon’s support of those local designer labels.

Luckily for those who write the MGH – and somewhat befitting of the number of Walkleys they have collectively not won – a little lightbulb went off in what’s left of their brains and they realised they hadn’t read the Maiden article in its entirety.

We admit that we came close to supporting the “Ooh, aren’t we getting a bit above our station in life, Jodie? Some nice frocks from Target not good enough for little Miss La-de-da!” theme that those twitterers presumed was the general thinking behind Maiden’s article.

What we will take offence at is Maiden’s meddling with this “First Lady” bullshit. That’s US for their FLOTUS. It’s not a term any good Aussie journalist would use, officially or otherwise.

We will conclude with one other thought, though, that might not impress Maiden.

Would the story have even been on her radar if had been the wife/girlfriend/squeeze of a Liberal PM splashing out on fancy clobber to represent Australia while abroad? If Maiden finds that offensive, she can blame how Newscorpse has been behaving over a long time now.

And that’s why it’s the MGH’s best guess that Maiden, working for Newscorpse as she does, must have been bitterly disappointed to find out Jodie was paying the bill for the outfits.

Imagine how struggling Australians, fearful of their lot and angry that the Australia they used to know has left them behind, would have reacted if, heaven forbid, their own taxpayer money had been wasted just to make Jodie look good as she jetsetted around the world…. and she’s not even married to the PM!

Gosh, it makes those at the MGH rather nostalgic for a time before John Howard became PM when a decent, fair-minded Australia mightn’t have even been at all bothered if our federal government had indeed stumped up some cash for a prime ministerial partner to look and feel comfortable when rubbing shoulders with world leaders.

Still, silly us! That ship sailed long ago, didn’t it?