The LNP apologists who pen and create the accompanying imagery for the lead-in promos for Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletins have been at it again!

And while Nine Entertainment Co. chair Peter Costello must surely be very proud of their efforts with the Queensland state election now less than six months away, we’ll repeat the call we’ve made over and over again: stop this fucking bullshit if you want to be seen as a professional and balance news outfit!

During Tipping Point, we repeatedly heard details of the looming news service on Tuesday night, April 2, and the TV screens were virtually covered with both audio and visual fury/indignation over Premier Steven Miles’s…. wait for it …. GOBSMACKING BRAIN FADE … as he talked to a victim of crime at that day’s Voice for Victims march on Parliament House.

Naturally enough, all this anti-Labor, anti-Miles rhetoric disappeared once the bulletin began. Newsreader Andrew Lofthouse in the bulletin’s opening sequence talked only of the Premier’s “awkward meeting” with crime victims and and co-newsreader Melissa Downes ended her own lead in on the rally with …. “but one victim in particular is fuming, accusing Steven Miles of forgetting a crime that shocked Queensland”.

No mention of any gob-smacking (they’ve used that before too!) brain snap on the Premier’s part. And why not? Because it simply didn’t happen.

The segment does show the exchange between the Premier and crime victim Russell Field, who lost his son, Matt, his son’s pregnant girlfriend Kate Leadbetter and their unborn son to a repeat juvenile offender high on drugs who ran a red light in a stolen car back in 2022.

And make no mistake, the Premier’s words were a little clumsy and he showed perhaps he needs more practice at thinking quickly on his feet but Russell Field’s claim that Miles did not know of that senseless tragedy that did befall two stricken families and did indeed shock a state is in itself quite unfair.

Field: “If the Deputy Premier of the state at the time and now Premier doesn’t know of that event, then something is wrong”. And then later on: “Yes that was a bit of a joke really. He didn’t really understand my particular case”.

Reporter Bailey Kenzie helped Mr Field out: “… it was an unforgettable tragedy and this grieving father wanted to make sure the Premier knew it.”

Nine News Queensland has come across over the eight months now that Voice for Victims has been rallying in the city – Tuesday’s was their third in that time – virtually as their patron, seemingly agreeing at every turn with that community organisation’s many claims that the state government is doing nothing to halt youth crime in particular.

Such claims by Voice for Victims spokespeople and now Russell Field’s unfair accusations that the Premier did not know about his family’s tragedy somewhat spoil their cause and what they are hoping to achieve for family members they have tragically lost. They really need to take care that, unlike Nine News Queensland, they aren’t in effect coming across as LNP apologists themselves.

For make no mistake: Nine News Queensland seems permanently hellbent on turning such matters into an LNP Queensland advertisement, especially in those pre-bulletin promos.

Perhaps Premier Miles should just be grateful this “gob-smacking” brainfade on his part didn’t happen on the first day of the election campaign proper come September.

There’s no doubt the commercial TV networks, tag-teaming with the deplorable, disgusting, non-newspaper called The Courier-Mail, would have spent the entire campaign banging on “about the first-day-of-the-campaign faux-pas that has ended Miles’s premiership!” Sound familiar? The version might be different in five months but trust us, it’s on its way!

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