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.

The bitter, washed-up, old hacks who compile this column hate the sight of disappointed kiddies’ faces. So a word of warning for Bluey fans, be they parents or their children. Please don’t rush out to your local cinema now on the basis of this heading in today’s (Saturday’s) The Sydney Morning Herald (above and below).

A rather excitable SMH sub perhaps should have made that top deck Bluey movie in planning – or something similar – seeing the movie version of the loveable Brisbane blue heeler hasn’t even been written yet and won’t hit the silver screen until at least 2027.

Yes, we know. Picky, picky. But that’s who we are.

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Nine News Queensland’ s 6pm bulletin on Friday presented a rather interesting statistic when reporting on the Crisafulli Government’s decision not to appeal the sentence handed out to one of the two men involved in that shocking home invasion in 2022 that left a wife and mother stabbed to death.

In some ways, thank goodness he wasn’t sentenced to a long prison term. He surely would have died in custody…. well, eventually.

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This next topic covers an aspect of modern reporting that perhaps should be in this column’s more serious sibling, Media Glass House, where it features often, namely the assumption a helluva lot of mainstream mediocre scribes make, namely that police have got their man!

Also from Nine News Queensland on Friday night came the story of a ute that smashed into a suburban Melbourne restaurant. Its driver who was trying to outrun a cop car escaped unhurt and fled on foot but here’s the piece we object to… “police eventually arrested the 29-year-old”.

Oh, what a big difference it makes between using “the” or “a”. We think arresting a 29-year-old is far more professional. Like the craft of journalism once was.

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