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.

We put both of our regular columns devoted to taking the piss out of our mainstream media – this column and its sibling Media Glass House – on the backburner while we concentrated on the election.

But with Peter Dutton now done and mashed and no-one out there expecting Anthony Albanese any time soon to do the left thing and sink AUKUS, to rightly declare Bibi Netanyahu a genocidal kiddy-killer and o rush Aussie aid to Gazaans being deliberately starved to death, here’s just a little nibble and not a huge byte as we get back to normalcy.

We’ll kick off with dear Greg Jennett on ABC News last night declaring the map of Tassie had gone full Rhonda Birchmore – yes, totally red!

“Ballot by ballot, the entire state went red,” politics guru Jennett declared.

Close but no cigar! Of the five federal seats down there, Labor kept their two, took two of the Liberals and Independent Andrew Willkie easily retained the Hobart-based seat of Clark, with roughly twice as many votes as his Labor (the one in red!) rival.

As far as we know, Wilkie has never favoured red as his signature campaign colour. Even if he does, Jennett was clearly declaring Tassie a total Labor redwash.

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Often the silly little mistakes this column picks up are worth a mention for how long it takes to correct the record than the error itself.

Last Thursday’s ABC News Breakfast ran the wrong Jane Norman report; it was the one from the day before which had Anthony Albanese heading off to the National Press Club. The bitter, twisted old hacks who compile this column spotted it immediately.

When Norman’s report finished, co-presenters James Glenday and Bridget Brennan seemed oblivious to the fuckup. And to be fair as The Bug always strives to be, both were probably concentrating on rehearsing their lines for the next topic at the time.

But it took some 15 minutes before Glenday explained the tape mixup.

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