… solid, logical journalism free of hyperbole and beatup

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.

“You call that jaw-dropping!” one of the compilers of this column scoffed the other night while monitoring Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletin.

“I’ll tell you what’s jaw-fucking-dropping,” he said to no-one in particular seeing he was on his own.

“Back in the day when I covered magistrates court on Stanley Street in South Brisbane actor Ray Barrett pleaded guilty to drink driving with a blood alcohol content well over 0.3 per cent.

“‘I guess I gave it a bit of a nudge,” a seemingly boastful Barrett told the SM with a flourish of theatrical understatement, seeing well over 0.3 would just about kill many other practised pisspots’.”

And what caused our compiler to reflect on such matters? All throughout Tipping Point, news anchor Melissa Downes had click-baited viewers with the promise to disclose the “jaw-dropping” blood alcohol level former NRL legend Steve Renouf had blown late on Tuesday night.

Well, that had our compiler understandably riveted to his seat in expectation of a Barrett-beating boozeathon from the former Bronco. But, dead set, he almost spat out his entire ninth schooner of rum and coke when he finally heard the reading – a commendable but far from jaw-dropping 0.197.

“Fucking hell,” he shouted to no-one in particular seeing he was on his own. “I’d blow 0.19 waking up on a Monday fucking morning after a weekend off the turps!”

***

“What we have here is a failure to communicate!” another of our Mediocre Bytes compilers declared wisely the other night.

“A failure to communicate good logical, professional, no-nonsense journalism!”

Okay, apart from showing she’s old enough to know one of the most famous lines from Hollywood ever, what was she on about?

This. On Tuesday night’s Nine News Queensland, the aforementioned Ms Downes introduced a segment with this: “A full day of deliberations from the mushroom murder trial jury has failed to reach a verdict”.

Reporter Amber Johnston joined in a fairly obvious criticism of the jury’s efforts. After six hours of back and forth deliberations there was “still no verdict”.

Yes, the message was loud and clear from both newsreader in the studio and the reporter on the ground; those jurors should hang their heads in shame for their unsuccessful and neglectful inability to reach a verdict after their first full day of working through nine weeks of evidence from more than 50 witnesses.

Whoever writes Downes’s intros must have been tempted to hint at the judge’s annoyance over the jury’s tardiness and the whole slack dozen of them should consider themselves lucky His Honour didn’t hit each and every one of them with a massive fine for their unforgivable dereliction of duty.

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