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.

At the risk of this column sounding like a lecture on Journalism 101, the bitter, washed-up, hacks who compile it still fondly remember when scribes thought it important to use words properly and in context.

And that would apply to reporters, sub-editors and whoever writes the bullshit rubbish that poor Melissa Downes is often forced to read out for Nine News Queensland 6pm bulletins.

Let’s start with Melissa who kicked off last Monday’s hour-long bulletin with the yarn about a murderer’s lawyers launching a Supreme Court appeal against his sentence, with Downes declaring “the shock move in court leaving [the husband] dumbstruck and questioning the legal system”.

In the report by Anna Rawlings that followed, the husband had clearly overcome his state of being dumbstruck and speaks with great passion about seeking justice for his late wife.

Rawlings makes no mention of the widower being dumbstruck but maybe she did ask about that possibility but it was simply not shown in her report?

Rawlings: Has this Supreme Court appeal left you dumbstruck?

Husband: Yes, it has.

Our Mediocre Bytes compilers who mostly come from journalism practised in another millennium also think that sub-editors need to value the meaning of words too, and that newspaper headings accurately reflect the guts of stories they are explaining in summary.

So here’s a story from The Sydney Morning Herald just a few days ago…

Our beef with the heading? There’s not a single mention in the article by Alexandra Smith of anyone “fearing” a possible case being taken to the Court of Disputed Returns. And who, if anybody, would fear such a challenge? Presumably only the Teal winner Nicolette Boele, and although she’s quoted a few times, she expresses no fear at all. In fact, she praises the Australian Electoral Commission for its work in the count and recount of Bradfield and clearly gives the impression that she’s not at all concerned about what might be the next step in the Bradfield saga.

So where the fuck did the sub-editor get this idea of fear being felt by somebody? Plucked it out of their own minds, most likely, and all because they liked the idea of using the word “fear” because it’s shorter than “shock” and “horror”?

Just for the interest of you BUGgers out there, one of our compilers who first spotted that SMH heading took about 20 seconds to come up with the effort below.

He accepts it’s not brilliant but points out it’s been a long time since he subbed on some of the world’s most famous papers and he’s very rusty. Did have time, though, to tinker with the appeal being “in the air” or, with some over-the-top kerning, “on the cards”. And yes, as The Bug has explained before, we’re sorry that we couldn’t exactly match the font the SMH used. Our design package, CorelDraw 4, has a very limited font range!

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Our Mediocre Bytes column usually confines itself to mistakes in editorial or other content published by media outlets.

But our researchers compiling this edition could not resist including a reference to the big mistake made by The Sydney Morning Herald’s political commentator James Massola in his appearance on today’s Insiders program on ABC TV. (below)

Their message is simple: James, comb your fucking hair and maybe hunt down a shirt with a collar, unless of course the “look” you’re shooting for is “chubby white guy in the midst of a mid-life crisis”.

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