In one of the closest results in history – and The Bug always reckons a dead heat is pretty close – two of Australia’s finest news organisations have shared our Media Glass House Arse-Licker of the month for September.

Arguably the two most balanced, fair and professional news outfits in the country, they are News Corpse Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, or more specifically for this award The Australian and ABC flagstaff current affairs program Four Corners.

Both felt a pressing need to give struggling Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a handup from his ruthless hardman image with creampuff, highly uncritical looks at the former Queensland copper and refugee tourturer.

And try as hard as they could, our judges could not separate the sickening, grovelling essay in the Oz by no other than Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers – the two scribes who refused to let Australia know before the May federal election what a secretive, power-hungry arsehole Scott Morrison really was – and the Four Corners coit-cleaner last Monday presented by Sean Nicholls.

Both the Oz article on the real Peter and how many mates he had and the ABC program – Defining Dutton (maybe that should have been Refining) – were classic examples of the nation’s current mainstream media modus operandi – it’s important to try to create a level playing field in Australian politics by clawing back to earth a party that is in ascendancy and propping up in whatever way possible a party that’s lagging behind for whatever reason.

This MO is pursued relentlessly and with a fierce single-minded determination, provided of course that regardless of what level of Australian politics we’re talking about – federal, state or local – the party in ascendancy is Labor and the party needing an enormous leg-up is the LNP or the Liberals separately.

Doubt this? Watch over the next six weeks as The Age and The Herald Sun, the local shock jocks and, sadly, probably the local ABC, do their damndest during the Victorian state election campaign to get Matthew … sorry Matt …. Sorry MG …. well, you know, their Guy over the line.

Our Arselicker-of-the-Month judges reckoned that in the case of The Australian article, the arses of Rupert Murdoch, Peter Dutton and the entire Liberal Party’s national secretariat would have been smelling like the Canberra Floriade by the time Benson and Chambers got through with them.

Giving Dutton’s cloaca a double cleansing and leaving Ita Buttrose with an equally sweet smelling backside you could safely feed your family off was Sean Nicholls.

So, well done to both organisations and these three fine journalists.

It can’t have been easy trying to make a silky smooth nice person out of a sour cunt.