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.

This column makes no apologies for the fact that the heading above doesn’t make any sense.

It stops more or less mid-message, doesn’t it?

That’s been done on purpose to highlight something similar that happened the other day as Sky LNPNews tried to put the boot into federal Labor as is its wont.

A quick explainer. Sky LNP News uses – well, floods could be a more apt description – Microsoft Start, which declares itself as a web portal that featured news headlines and articles, with short sharp “news” pieces that promote the platform’s television segments featuring its many LNP public relations officers who call themselves hosts.

At top and expanded below is the Microsoft Start plug Sky LNPNews used the other day to promote some comments from their idol, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

We know! We know! A proper news organisation filled with professionals would have quickly read over the report of what Dutton said and spiked it as unnewsworthy and, worse than that, lazy politics undeserving of coverage.

Or if it had been a grade 5 teacher, scribbled “must try better” on a student’s work and thrown it back in their face.

But not Sky LNPNews. An Australian opposition leader calling the federal government a disaster and its PM and a senior minister an international embarrassment! Unprecedented! Stop the presses! Hold page one! Send something immediately to Microsoft Start!

In its haste to constantly put something up on Microsoft Start that gets stuck into woke, left-wing, out-of-touch Labor, they couldn’t even finish the sentence we’ve circled.

They had three fucking paragraphs to get right and they fucked it up.

Still, we do admire how they managed to use “embarrassment” FIVE times in that short, sharp, post, including once in the blocklines, so you’ve sorta got to admire their flaming desire to spread Dutton’s message so forcefully.

***

The old, washed-up and bitter hacks who compile this column and its more serious sibling, Media Glass House, sincerely wish people using X and other social mediocre platforms would shut the fuck up with their observations that Alan Jones is as guilty as hell and should have been charged decades ago.

Those compilers don’t expect those online commentators to heed their reminder that under our legal system, people are entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise, but it would be a crying shame if Jones can’t get a fair trial down the track – we’re pretty confident his pricey lawyers will be arguing that it will be impossible to find a fair, unbiased jury – because far too many jurists on social mediocre had already declared him guilty as all get out.

Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

Follow The Bug Online on WordPress.com

---