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 is frequently forced to remind TV news bulletins around this big brown land of ours that the key word for their bulletins is “news”. Factual, actual, news presented in a professional way that does not offend the expectations, let alone the eyes and ears, of the viewing audience.

So it is with ongoing sadness yet no surprise at all to the bitter, washed-up, old hacks who compile this column that they now dissect a segment on Nine News Queensland’s 6pm Christmas Eve bulletin.

Take it away, newsreader Wendy Kingston with her pre-ad break tease for the story about some north Queensland fishers off Magnetic Island “and a shark encounter that will give you the shivers.”

Our newsreader again after the break: “Well, have a look at this breath-taking vision …. that captured more than a dozen sharks circling the boat…”

The footage viewers were then presented with was from a drone the fishers sent skyward to capture their tinnie surrounded by those sharks!

And here’s the bit from Kingston that had our compilers shaking their collective balding heads….”with some as large as the boat itself”. Note “large” not “long”.

We have no idea as to the identity of the sight-impaired person who wrote this crap that the poor lass behind the desk was forced to read out but MB has scanned all the footage broadcast over and over and our hacks have circled (at top right) the shark that was probably the biggest of that swarm.

They figure the story would not have had the same impact or click bait potential as “with one shark as long as the boat’s outboard motor!”.

And can Nine News Queensland also give its viewers some credit? Their demography is not easily frightened kids. At best, they have graying hair and would have been very, very, unlikely to have been given the shivers or had their breath taken away by what they saw.

And we won’t even mention the fact that the SHARK SWARM FISHERMEN strap at the bottom is also horribly incorrect use of basic English. Shit, we just did.

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