The Bug’s Mediocre Bytes compilers have been left feeling very hurt indeed and very chastened after Nine News Brisbane virtually gave us a “fuck you” following our plea for their newsreaders and reporters to stop using the word “incredible” when it was absolutely, totally, unwarranted.

In our column last Sunday, we had fun with the station’s 6pm bulletin the previous night when Mia Gover described a very short clip of two pelicans fighting over food as “incredible”.

This followed the mid-last-week declaration by Melissa Downes that vision of an opportunistic thief who poked his head in a Melbourne store, saw no-one was watching and grabbed a tray of donuts was also “incredible”.

Naturally, we hoped our story would prompt producers/editors up at the station to, at the very least, put out a memo about their staff’s ridiculous use of “incredible”. Just some sound advice to trigger a reaction should a scribe use the word when penning their upcoming to-camera or voiceover pieces.

So what happened that very night – last Sunday?

Bailey Kenzie, reporting about a Logan father of two who was allegedly attacked with a hammer by his neighbour over a van parking dispute, had “this afternoon been discharged from Logan Hospital but his injuries are still incredibly fresh”.

Perhaps Kenzie is an expert in how quickly an alleged hammer blow to the back of the head should heal and he did tell us the gash to the back of the victim’s head was “too graphic to show” but then showed us it anyway, very slightly pixilated, from what appears a shot taken at the hospital.

Now it’s true that the story does not disclose the date on which this alleged assault took place but we’ll stick with our belief there was absolutely nothing incredible – nothing totally beyond belief – about the speed with which this wound was healing.

And let’s finish with a little amusing production hiccup at the end of the segment.

The station crossed to Bailey at police HQ, where he told us the neighbour had now been charged with two counts: assault occasioning bodily harm and wilful damage, despite what the strap across the bottom was telling us.

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