The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre, sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively paint a worrying picture of the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.
Say it again, Lisa!
A few of our Mediocre Bytes compilers can’t be absolutely positive about this – there’s no iview access to past ABC News Breakfast programs – but they were fairly sure they heard co-host Lisa Millar say on Thursday morning that the Robotdebt Royal commission had heard evidence that Stuart Robert had decided to “dumb down” on the illegal and deadly scheme when he had actually reportedly said “double down” according to a public service witness.
Like a lot of Mediocre Bytes segments, this is no biggie but it’s just rather fun if Lisa indeed misspoke and said “dumb down”. Maybe she’s had to interview Robert over the period, formed an opinion as to what he was like as a federal minister, and her mistake, therefore was entirely forgivable?
It’s simply not cricket!
We’ve not taken ABC cricket writer Simon Smale to task before but we’d like to gently unpick his overnight report on the third Australia-India men’s Test in Indore.
Mediocre Bytes simply wants to highlight two possibly contrary thoughts in his report.
As you can see from the above extracts, Smale thinks Australia will chase JUST 76 runs for victory. Sounds like a walk in the park, doesn’t it. Eazy pezy! But has he forgotten the team we’re talking about here?
For here’s the rub. Smale also thinks anything more than 100 as a target – that’s 101 and above, by the way – would be a tricky ask. We agree given our knowledge of the team doing the chasing this arvo. But we are also entitled to wonder how something that should be a breeze becomes battling deadly headwinds if you add another 25 runs to the task?
At the very least, we think Smale should have deleted the “just”. Then again, maybe he’d gone to the stadium dunny after a dodgy vindaloo and didn’t see Australia lose its last six wickets for 11 runs in 34 balls yesterday? And maybe he thinks our brave top-order lads are incapable of being four down for bugger-all later today to give those seven other batsmen something to think and then really choke about, making six wickets for 11 runs in 34 balls look like a supreme effort of gritty and commendable concentration befitting the world’s No1 Test side?
Don’t insult our country!
Memo to the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald over today’s editorial: The Dirty Digger is not an Australian. He relinquished his Aussie citizenship a long, long, time ago.
We should all be very grateful for that. So please use former-Australian or, better still, avoid it completely. Let’s leave it to Newscorpse to paint that horrible piece of shit as one of the our finest Australians ever. Let’s try to avoid any mention of the fact we inflicted that cunt on the rest of the world.
A minor complaint?
We’re not even sure if this one is right or wrong.
We suppose the first week of the new NRL season starts off the competition to find out who will be minor premiers after September 3 completes round 27, but it just sounds funny to use that terminology now.
Mediocre Bytes turned to respected and now retired rugby league writer Barry Dick, who filed top copy for The Courier Mail and Sunday Mail for 43 years and is a proud Suncorp Stadium Media Hall of Famer.
He nicely summed up what we at MB were thinking: “Very odd. Haven’t seen it used like that but suppose it’s technically correct.”
Technically correct is the way we’re all hoping at least one Australian batter can play this afternoon. Surely, someone’s proud enough of their baggy green to cobble together 30?
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