Our media analysis teams wish to issue a trigger warning to readers. This edition of The Bug’s Media Glass House contains items drawn from coverage by Brisbane’s Murdoch-owned daily turdbloid The Courier-Mail.

Quite often our Media Glass House teams have cited examples of news stories which lapse into commentary and opinion by the injection of stray adjectives colouring the reader’s mind about the subject being explored.

This has been especially obvious in the Murdoch media’s national broadshit The Australian which almost daily runs headlines with an anti-Labor Party slant but which are not quotes or comments by anyone being cited in the story itself.

Our eagle-eyed MGH researchers noted a prime example of a loaded adjective in a story in Brisbane’s daily turdbloid The Courier-Mail last Saturday. (below)

In the story focussing on how opposition leader David Crisafulli’s campaign team runs its media operations, there was this line about the day-to-day logistics employed: “The locations of the leader’s media conferences are not shared out of fear they will be crashed by protestors, including the venomous Electrical Trades Union.”

Venomous? Isn’t that a somewhat colourful – but more significantly, coloured – adjective to employ?

Omitting it altogether would still convey to readers the state of play – the union doesn’t like the LNP.

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With just less than a fortnight to go before voting ends, many observers including our own MGH teams, have noticed the paucity of political advertising in hard-copy news outlets such as Brisbane’s daily turdbloid The Courier-Mail.

Online ads and social media platforms such a TikTok are where the action is these days, apparently.

But for at least one day each week the LNP has a regular full-page ad in The Courier-Mail, aka the newsletter of the LNP’s Bowen Hills branch. (below)

Somewhat cleverly the ad is presented as a legitimate column. But our MGH teams have noticed that it has always appeared without the required “written and authorised by…” notation at the bottom of the page.

They hope this omission might be rectified before polling day.

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Our MGH teams nodded their collective heads and allowed themselves a slight smile when clapping their collective eyes on the news story and accompanying picture below taken outside the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday where some young blokes – not including the one giving the finger to The Courier-Mail snapper – were appearing on charges of sexual assault.

Yes, our researchers mused, there is always one “friend” of the accused who behaves in such a way that guarantees bigger coverage of their colleague’s or colleagues’ court appearance than might otherwise be expected.

Certainly the story itself was just about half the size of the picture and may well have run in relative obscurity if not for the colourful gesture by the unidentified “supporter” of the accused.

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Thankfully viewers of the Seven Network’s main 6pm news bulletins in Brisbane can now rest easy after a permanent replacement for sacked newsreader Sharyn Ghidella was announced. (below)

The big page-three announcement in Saturday’s edition of The Courier-Mail of Sarah Greenhalg’s appointment as co-anchor of the main bulletin from next Monday night came months after Ms Ghidella was cut loose in a move the paper said had “shocked Queensland”.

Yes, our MGH teams confirm that each and every one of them can remember precisely where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of Sharyn’s on-screen demise.

How viewers have survived since July with just one main newsreader is testament to their valour and endurance, say our MGH researchers with tongues firmly in cheeks.

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