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.

Okay, the pedants – aka the washed up, bitter, old hacks – who compile this column appreciate that maybe they need to get a life.

That some of the things they rail against are pretty damn picky. Indeed … Picky. Picky. Picky.

And maybe there’s no finer example of that than a graphic (at top and below) that appeared on Nine News Queensland out of Brisbane last night and got under our pedantic skins. Again.

Call us pedants pedants if you must but we just don’t like to see the $ sign followed by the superfluous spelt-out dollar. Happens all the time!

And those in the once great craft of journalism who don’t see a problem with that probably still scoff at those who say “ATM machine” and “PIN number”. Mediocre Bytes sees the $ sign followed by “dollar” to be a sort of fellow traveller to that malarkey.

Okay! Okay! We’ll try to get a life but before we do, how about this one!

Our beef is simple: why would we want to read Rachel Withers’s analysis if Crikey can’t even get its promo for it right?

The bottom line is that we should we care and we care we do that graphics should be logical and commonsensical if such a word exists and standfirsts for Crikey yarns should be blemish free. It’s not a big ask to get the simple things right so they don’t end up in a pedantic column such as this.

To end, we risk being accused of even more pedantry by asking – yet again – a simple question: Does the multi-billion-dollar Murdoch empire spend anything on actual human beings in its news production processes to check basic facts?

The lead item on the national broadshit The Australian’s online news site this morning concerned a protest about the Israeli government’s genocidal practices in both Gaza and Lebanon. (below)

The protestors chose to express their views outside a church where our current royal visitor King Charles was due to visit.

But our MGH teams noticed a disconnect between the text of the story and the physical evidence contained in the photo accompanying it.

The pointer and a line in the actual story quoted the protestors’ banner as saying: “Empire build on genocide.” (below)

But the photo clearly showed a sign saying “Empire built on genocide.” (below)

So, our MGH teams’ question remains, who is checking basic facts at The Oz?

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