The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; that pays homage to those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset over the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.

Some years back, Mediocre Bytes abandoned its annual dangling-participle-of-the-year award and for obvious reasons.

Electronic mediocre scribes – and especially the tyros, dog bless their cotton socks – couldn’t get enough of them. It was almost as if they had a solemn duty to insert a dangling participle in just about every news report they presented.

For those who don’t know about dangling particples, they used to be an absolute no-no in state school English classes way back when, and by that we mean when slates were used in class!

Here’s an example one of our elderly and increasingly confused column compilers was taught at Aspley State School in the late 1950s/early 1960s: Walking down the street, my hat was blown off by a wind gust. Or words to that effect. See, the hat wasn’t walking down the street. Hats don’t walk. Or talk for that matter.

So while we abandoned the dangling-participle annual competition for very good reasons, we occasionally like to remind ourselves from time to time that they are still rife in the crafty f

And for that reason alone, please welcome to the screen Nine News Queensland reporter Jacob Chicco who was reporting the other night on a couple of lairs in a car being driven erratically and being tracked by those aboard the Polair helicopter.

Ready for it? It’s a doozey!

Chicco: Dangerous driving with no care in the world, the police helicopter tracking [their] movements…. more like the madness of two wanted criminals….

Oh dear! So easily fixed in a few seconds with a simple rewrite.

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Tasmania hasn’t been called Van Diemen’s Land for quite some time, right? So it would be pretty stupid for a senior journalist proud of their reputation for accuracy and professionalism to repeatedly call the Apple Isle Van Diemen’s Land, you BUGgers out there would no doubt agree?

Well, ABC Insiders host David Speers, firstly on ABC Weekend Breakfast and then on his 9am program today, repeatedly called X, the social mediocre site being run into the ground by business genius Elon Musk, Twitter!

On each platform, he did manage to say that X used to be known as Twitter, but then at least three times on Weekend Breakfast and then multiple times on Insiders called it Twitter.

Mediocre Bytes is pretty confident most Australians know that social media platform is now called X. Repeatedly calling it Twitter is shabby and poor journalism.

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