The washed-up, bitter, old hacks who compile the Media Glass House were gobsmacked the other night when Nine News Queensland described the finding by Federal Court Justice Michael Lee that Bruce Lehrmann had raped Brittany Higgins as “gobsmacking”.

They immediately concluded that it took a particular mindset up Mount Coot-Tha way – on whoever wrote that intro read out by poor, dear Melissa Downes (at top) and whoever else in the newsroom saw no problem with it – that the judge’s finding presumably had that news bulletin’s audience similarly gobsmacked.

Well, we at MGH have some news of our own for those who compile Nine News Queensland. We’ve never seen a poll conducted on this but we suspect that a vast majority of Australians would believe that sex between Lehrmann and Higgins did in fact take place, consensual or otherwise, in Parliament House on that night back in 2019.

Lehrmann’s barrister even invited Justice Lee to apply his mind to that possibility and that’s precisely what he did. Justice Lee’s rape finding was no doubt influenced by the video he poured over of Lehrmann plying Higgins with strong spirit-based drinks before the late-night visit to Parliament. Getting women pissed seems to be part of Lehrmann’s MO.

We also suspect that eleven of the 12 jurors in Lehrmann’s rape trial would have happily slotted him, had the trial not been aborted because of one moronic juror who had “why women falsely claim rape” material in his possession. It’s a crying pity he couldn’t have been charged with something serious.

As one of our washed-up, bitter, old hacks said of his decision had he been on that jury: “Lehrmann claimed sex did not take place. Higgins claimed it did. If I formed the opinion that sex took place, I would have had to slot him for being a liar.”

But back to this news bulletin’s view that Justice Lee’s findings – based on the lesser balance of probabilities rule in a civil case compared with beyond reasonable doubt in a criminal trial – were gobsmacking.

Apart from “gobsmacking” being a rather unprofessional term awash with hyperbole that we think good journalists should avoid, we simply do not believe Nine’s audience smacked their gobs or reacted in any other way akin to the description below.

We repeat: to declare the judge’s decision “gobsmacking” says much more about those who run Nine News Queensland than it does about its viewing audience. Maybe they were gobsmacked that a rape victim was finally believed in a court of law?

DISCLAIMER: This post has had to reply on the memory of the washed-up, bitter, old hacks who compile the Media Glass House. We went onto 9now to doublecheck the words used in that bulletin – there was another unusual description apart from gobsmacking we wanted to get right – but Monday night’s 6pm news is missing from that service. Maybe there’s a separate MGH story in that?

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