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.

Mainstream mediocre, all together now!

Two and two are four! Four and four are eight! Five and five are 10!

See, it’s not too hard, is it? Well, maybe it is for some scribes reporting on polls and their two-party-preferred results.

At top and below are recent examples of Seven’s Sunrise program and Australian Associated Press scribe Fraser Barton having difficulty adding up a two-party-preferred result for the looming Queensland state election and getting to the desired 100 per cent.

C’mon guys! It’s not rocket surgery.

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Okay, so what else can we fill this column with, what with it being the sabbath and our desire to work – considering what we’re paid to do this – is probably far below 50-60. Oops!

One we did store away from some days back was the tyro on Nine News Queensland reporting on a big industrial blaze in the US and breathlessly telling us the smoke “could be seen from the air”. Not from another state 100km away! Not from space! But from the air! Holy smoke!

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And here’s a little one from today, just to show that Mediocre Bytes never sleeps!

A story in The Sun-Herald sports pages on the NBA – the son of a basketball legend making his pre-season debut – has been tagged as TENNIS!

One of our washed-up, bitter old UNPAID! hacks spotted this little gem in his home-delivered hardcopy edition when he returned home from church and is delighted to report that it hasn’t been corrected for the online paper supposedly uploaded at the end of last night’s shift when it was as squeaky clean and accurate as it could possibly be.

Okay, no biggie but as we’ve said many many times, Mediocre Bytes is not about the biggies. Just the annoying little shit that shows us how badly the once proud craft of journalism – and especially sub-editing – has slipped in recent years.

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