Before we give Nine News reporter Amber Johnston the rounds of the MGH kitchen, the entire Bug office, surrounding streets and down to and back from the Gold Coast, here again are the words she used on last night’s bulletin to describe mushroom murderer Erin Patterson’s arrival at court for a pre-sentence hearing including victim impact statements.

We know! We know. You BUGgers would probably agree with us that Johnston’s words could easily win a world championship for mindless, illogical, risible twaddle. Even if she thought she was at court as a senior colour feature writing specialist, her words make no sense at all. Even if a cold-blooded killer was, perhaps, thinking of what her shattered family would have to say, the idea, perhaps, that she was searching for what just one of them was yet to say was a stretch way beyond what Patterson is facing.

We should have steadied ourselves for Johnston’s observations about her and Patterson’s clairvoyancy skills with the reporter’s words just earlier: “Hair matted (oh, okay, maybe), eyes hollowed (hmm? nah!) Erin Patterson emerged dishevelled (ooohh?), barely a shadow of her former self (now that is a stretch!).

And what bells are we referring to in our heading above? In our most recent MGH (link below), we restated a common view expressed over time: that the very best of journalists are born with a sense of logic and commonsense or quickly acquire those traits along their journalistic travels.

Ding! Ding! Ding! is what good professional scribes hear ringing in their noggins if they type something that has absolutely no place in print or in notes, real or mental, that frame a to-air/to camera piece.

Sadly, Ding! Ding! Ding! clearly didn’t register in Amber Johnston’s mind at any stage yesterday but we still hold out hope for her as a journo. She can and will improve and we see no reason for her to turn to fiction writing or doing click-bait promos for reality TV shows. Well, not straight away at least.

Getting a Gripske

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