…but who do they stand for?

The Bug‘s Media Glass House held out high hopes for internet news site In Queensland when it burst onto the scene a wee while ago now.

Sure, we took their boast that they had Queensland’s best writers on board with a grain of salt, especially after reading some of their stuff. Any new news platform – especially one that boasts it’s the state’s only truly independent, high-quality, news service – would probably try that sort of business on.

But we can say the site has been a tad disappointing for some of the washed up, bitter, old hacks who compile this column. They thought it might show a refreshing centrist, if not leftist, approach to at least attempt to balance the dreadful mainstream mediocre that blights this nation at the moment.

But here are just two examples from the site earlier this week that worry us just a little more than a little.

EXAMPLE ONE:

The heading is bullshit. Read the article and the Premier admits no such thing. It says she’s concerned about a Queensland Police survey that shows the number of Queenslanders who feel safe walking around at night has dipped into a minority.

That’s fair news but facts matter in news gathering and presentation. We also love the covert message in that heading: read ‘no-longer-interested-in-her-day job Premier with no answers!’

One of those washed-up, tired, old hacks mentioned above remembers being scared shitless while walking through the Valley after finishing a night shift at the Daily Sun in the late 1980s. He carried a MT cutter with him and rushed cowardly from street lamp to street lamp.

Anyone is entitled to be scared walking around at night but that 2022/23 QPS annual report internal did not disclose a significant turnaround in those feeling afraid at stepping out at night. And no Premier worth their salt would see those results and eagerly agree with the general notion implied in that heading that Queenslanders generally no longer feel safe.

Sadly, the heading for this article gives the impression In Queensland has joined with the state’s unofficial opposition parties – Channel 9’s nightly 6pm news and News Queensland at Bowen Hills – to portray Queensland as a state riddled throughout by an epidemic of youth crime that has all Queensland scared shitless in their homes.

EXAMPLE TWO:

The heading is bullshit. Labor’s primary vote at the May 2022 federal election was 32.58 per cent, the Australian Electoral Commission tells us.

This story references the latest Newspoll, which puts the Labor vote two points down to 34 per cent. So who the fuck was the dunce who wrote this incorrect heading?

And even if we can’t blame the author of the piece for that heading and accept their intro was correct, we are entitled to wonder if they come from the Phillip Coorey/Chris Uhlmann School of Compulsory Preferential Voting, where any poll that puts the LNP ahead on primaries must surely show that the country is headed for a hung parliament and electoral chaos unless, hint, hint, we vote the LNP back in.

For the interest of the person who wrote the heading and the person who wrote this story, Labor won that 2022 election OUTRIGHT from their admittedly low 32.58 per cent primary vote, compared with the LNP’s 35.69. We think it’s something to do with adding the Greens vote to the left column when you try to work out who’s leading and likely to win under our CPV system. And that’s something Coorey and Uhlmann repeatedly refused to do as they shamelessly touted a vote for their side of politics.

One more suggestion for In Queensland and its politics writers, story or headline. You don’t by any chance have a preference to highlighting Newspoll?

The Herald mastheads’ Resolve Political Monitor poll also came out at the start of the week which showed Labor’s primary vote up one to 37, and the LNP’s down three from 34 to 31. Oh, did we mention that poll was of 4728 voters, roughly four times the Newspoll number.

That Resolve result surely must be worthy of analysis considering the federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been spending the month since the last Resolve poll dog whistling this nation’s racists by accusing Anthony Albanese of not doing his day job while he cavorts with and “unfairly” looks after the One Nations people. We’ve searched unsuccessfully for an In Queensland report on that massive poll.

The Media Glass House will be keeping a close eye on In Queensland, especially as the MSM in anticipation of a No result on Saturday are already baying for Albanese’s blood for bringing on this “racist and divisive” vote. Their attacks in the months ahead will be fierce and unrelenting.

It will be interested to see if In Queensland joins the rabid pack of jackals ripping at Albanese’s throat or presents a fair and balance view of how this referendum for a sensible, non-controversial advisory body for our First Nations people that would see taxpayers’ money better spent got derailed and by whom and for what selfish purpose.

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