The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; those 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.

Promoting their favourite brand?

The bitter, washed-up, old hacks who compile The Bug‘s two media-focused columns had a spirited debate over whether this first item really should have been kept over for the Media Glass House, this column’s much more serious sibling.

It’s only two little words circled in the graphic (at top and below) but in the current NSW state election environment where the great bulk of the mainstream mediocre is trying its utmost to get the LNP government of Premier Dominic Perrottet re-elected, the choice of those two words is instructive.

The bottom story was the SMH’s online promotion yesterday to plug their story on the Nine Network’s leaders debate tonight. The story was about both sides of politics and what they hoped to achieve from – or avoid in – the encounter.

So what possessed the sub-editor – or whatever you call the nerds who throw these online pages together – to label the story: Liberal Party?

A simple mistake? Or did someone think that was the Right thing to do, with the world’s greatest ever Treasurer in history, Nine Entertainment Co. chairman Peter Costello, standing behind their chair, either physically or spiritually. Or put another way: does anyone out there in Bugland think that pointer would have ever been tagged Labor Party, by accident or design?

Oh, and if you think Mediocre Bytes is drawing a long bow here, take some time to see how the MSM right now is ramping up its anti-Labor attacks, across both print and electronic media platforms.

Oh, and don’t get us started on the other story plugged in that SMH online pointer yesterday. We’ll leave that for a Media Glass House observation.

Suffering succotash

Now this one really is no biggie but made us smile anyway.

Channel 9 News in Brisbane the other night had a report on a north Queensland siege and when police finally entered the house, they found the man’s “body suffering from self-inflicted gunshot wounds”.

We’re no medical experts but we do know the meaning of suffering and we’re pretty sure that body was not suffering from anything.

Cause and affect

We at Mediocre Bytes are often amused – and, trust us, we are easily amused – at the mistakes that appear in those straplines at the bottom of TV news bulletins.

We’ve forgotten the fancy industry word for them – news ticker, crawler, zipper, ticker tape?Bugger, there is another word for them (help us out here Dean Felton!) – but we say well done to the ABC’s News Breakfast team who this morning corrected this one within seconds of Mediocre Bytes spotting it. Often, these things stay on screen for hours.

Finally, a declaration…

…. that we don’t know if this was right or wrong.

ABC cricket writer Simon Smale the other day reported the fourth Test against India ended in a draw after Australia declared in its second innings late on the fifth day at only two down and with a fair lead.

Maybe they did? It just seemed very unusual and with The Bug‘s limited resources, we never found out whether Smalesy got it right or not. Advice welcome.