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.

Probably the most interesting thing about this Mediocre Bytes column is how quickly our washed-up, old hacks compiled it …. and all within just a few minutes watching and reading efforts this fine Saturday morning from our nation’s mainstream mediocre.

Yes. All four we’re going to mention here were gathered in the time most of you BUGgers out there took to burn some toast for brekkie.

Let’s start with ABC Weekend Breakfast when one of the hosts used “allegedly” wrongly. And, yes, again, we know it’s one of our pet hates in a battle lost long ago but cohost Fauziah Ibrahim kicked off an item by talking about “alleged” anti-Semitic attacks over recent weeks, mostly in Sydney. Anyone with reasonable eyesight watching news about these attacks over recent weeks knows full well they are anti-Semitic – the clues really are from what is to be seen in the symbols and words used by those applying graffiti at these sites. To be fair, her co-host dropped the alleged in his offerings. Regardless, that’s one.

Back to Fauziah Ibrahim who not long after talked about the new LNP coalition government in Queensland. Not quite, Fauziah. The LNP in the Sunshine State is a single entity party. The Liberal National Party of Queensland. It is not a coalition. That’s two.

One of our compilers then got out of bed to discover his Saturday morning SMH had not been home-delivered. Maybe a newsagent stuff-up? Maybe some one walking past stole it but who reads newspapers any more?

So our compiler went into his office, opened the SMH online and found the following two examples of shoddy writing and/or sub-editing.

The first one excited him greatly. Mediocre Bytes just loves it when a hardcopy newspaper heading is a fuck-up. Once again, yes, we know. We’re a sadsack old bunch but we’re far too old to change now.

The heading in question is shown at top and below. Yes, it’s missing a word. Would have taken a competent, professional sub-editor a moment to correct it and still fill out the deck nicely. Anywho, that’s three and the toast is still being made.

Lastly, the same SMH on-line broke another silly old rule that once held sway in the craft; two moving things collide; one does not collide with the other.

But as all you BUGgers can clearly seen from this clip, the passenger plane involved in this tragic mid-air collision over Washington did more than its fair share of colliding. Blame apportioned.

Mediocre Bytes lost count on the number of times this silly old rule of journalism was breached in print and electronic media reporting on the deadly collision. The military Black Hawk helicopter also did more than its fair share of colliding with. Regardless, that’s four! (And kudos to the graphic artist who got it right).

All four in a matter of minutes and the toast didn’t even have time to be popped down again just for a little bit longer.

Postscript: Our home-delivered SMH remains missing, so we can’t say whether or not the two SMH bloopers mentioned above appeared in that missing first-edition hard copy. We’re fairly confident they would have. The online version is where they sometimes fix up shit.

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