It would be a bit churlish of the bitter, twisted old hacks who throw together The Bug‘s Media Glass House – or as they call it The More Frequent Media Watch – to be too critical of that weekly ABC program.

It’s only natural that the MGH is often likely to be ahead of Media Watch, or indeed its funny little Thursday program Media Bytes. We’re mainly words and accidentally plagiarised (thanks, Peter!) graphics that can be uploaded at will; the two ABC programs are far more complex creatures with moving pictures to take and microphones and lighting to be put in place and talent that has to have its nose and forehead powdered and ego stroked and all sorts of other things that take time to produce.

We at the MGH know all this and it’s why we weren’t doing a childish “na na naar naaar naaaah!” when the real Paul Barry and the real once-a-week-so-it-can-be-a-little-stale Media Watch got around to two topics the MGH has been banging on about for yonks …. if yonks is a number of days, that is.

We refer, of course, to the ongoing disgraceful, shameless, shitshow that the former newspaper the Herald Sun calls its Victorian state election coverage and the ongoing revelations of plagiarism by LNP Queensland public relations officer Peter Gleeson.

The MGH showed how quickly it could report on mainstream mediocre mischief when it saw a tweet by Channel 9’s Josh Bavas who pinged Gleeson for copying four paragraphs of Bavas’s own words in one of the articles Gleeson wrote in his 12-page hatchet-job investigation the Palaszczuk Queensland Labor government Saturday week ago in The Courier-Mail.

The MGH then gleesonfully … sorry …gleefully reported on an excellent Guardian Australia article that exposed an earlier piece of plagiarism by Gleeson where 62 per cent of a Queensland Confidential column in May was taken up by material lifted word for word and without attribution from a parliamenentary website on how the state’s one- chamber house operates.

Yes, Peter the plagiarist has form!

And we also give credit to Media Watch last night for discovering another article in Gleeson’s 12-page, one-far-right-eyed hit job that was chokas full of plagiarised copy.

Media Watch also deserves praise for its excoriation of the Herald Sun‘s rebeating-up of a 2013 road accident involving Premier Andrews’ wife and the bizarre, puzzling takes on the Premier’s holiday house fall last year, including some confected outrage by Andrew Bolt (at top).

But once again, we won’t go on too much about the fact that The Bug and its MGH have been banging on now about how woeful the Herald Sun and The Age have both been in their attacks on Andrews and Labor in the current election campaign and the shameless way other gutless media join in the pile-on.

Those two former newspapers are the principal attack dogs for the Liberal and National parties in this campaign, with other media too lazy to do their own fucking stuff and Matthew Guy simply joining in.

We’re confident Barry will get around to some of the shit the former newspaper The Age has been throwing the Labor state government’s way down there.

Tomorrow, the MGH will be looking at an even more important example of just how far the mainstream media has sunk into the stinking quagmire of biased, ethics-free “journalism” in this shitty brown land of ours; the apparent decision by Murdoch’s Newscorpse and Costello’s Nine Entertainment Co. mastheads and radio outlets to largely ignore the current inquiry into the deadly Robodebt scheme.

How many 12-page wraparounds would the likes of Gleeson and other Newscorpse and Herald brownnosing hacks have already thrown together – in Gleeson’s case with a little accidental help from others! – if the illegal Robodebt had been a Labor government scandal now being investigated by a new incoming LNP government? Wraparounds! Hah! Special afternoon editions most likely. 20,000 DEAD! in 400-point splashes.

The MGH has no doubt whatsoever that Paul Barry and Media Watch will get around to that next Monday … or the Monday after… and all in their good time.

***

We don’t mean for this edition of MGH to consist entirely of The Bug blowing its own trumpet, but…..

The ABC’s Media Watch program that aired on 31 October examined the potential impact News Corp Australia’s shareholding in the new Betr online gambling app might have on reporting of the gambling industry and especially the issue of problem gamblers.

We take this opportunity to point out that our humble MGH raised the very same issue back in April. (below)  

We’ve raised it again several times since (below) in the intervening months, especially in light of the heavy use of Betr ads in News Crap Australia outlets at Melbourne Cup time.

Our own MGH researchers admit it took no great effort on their part to identify and canvass this issue since, in their words citing a technical media analysis term, it was “sticking out like canine testicles”. Just saying.