Words still have meanings, right? And it’s still important that they be used properly, especially in journalism, right?

Well, the bitter, washed-up, hacks who compile this column still believe that and there’s one word in particular that they’d like to share with Nine News Queensland – and that’s accomplice.

The English language – and the meaning of words – do evolve over time. People for example used to have a gay old time. But our column compilers still think the word accomplice is pretty much definitive in slotting someone into doing naughty illegal things in company with another.

So, let’s rewind a recent Nine News Queensland 6pm news bulletin that ran an update on a couple in an allegedly stolen car who fled from an accident scene they had apparently been involved in. The bulletin reported that a woman had been arrested and charged but that …. wait for it …. police were still looking for…. wait for it …. her accomplice!

Oh, dear. It would seem there is no need for any court appearance by this woman under that silly, quaint old notion of our legal system, namely the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

The MGH has banged in relentlessly over the years about this worrying trend in modern journalism to ignore that fundamental basic of our judicial system. Reports of youths who had fled a home invasion but luckily police nabbed them a few suburbs away and they had been charged. Over and over again. No need to front up to a magistrate! Go directly to jail; do not pass through the front doors of a courtroom.

It’s so common that the MGH wonders why there aren’t “for sale” signs over court houses all around the nation. The nation’s mainstream mediocre has largely deemed them irrelevant.

This column also frets over the training standards if any exist any more for tyro reporters. How long do they have to be in the job before using the word “accomplice” like that automatically rings alarm bells?

And of course it’s not just the reporter. Didn’t anybody in the Nine Newsroom – a producer in an editing booth? Anyone? – who would have instinctively realised as professional journalists that using the word accomplice was simply wrong, wrong, wrong!

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