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.

Some time ago, The Bug introduced a new mainstream mediocre award for electronic mediocre only (well, the online editions of printed papers too): the length of time a fuckup stays online for all to see until it’s finally corrected.

The new gong was struck after 9Now for many, many days had the staff of Nine News Adelaide named as hosts and journos at Nine News Queensland. What was the gong mainly recognising? That we can all make mistakes but, for fuck’s sake, is there anyone professional enough in the news room or the online creating nerds hub to spot the clanger and fix it in, if not a flash then a fairly short time?

Well, today’s offering won’t be taking out the Left On Line award for 2025 – it can only last three hours in reality – but we did like this image (at top and below) from this morning’s (Friday’s) edition of ABC’s News Breakfast.

We have run plenty of these apostrophal* abominations over time – we have wondered a few times how hard a job it must be for the president of the Queensland Teacher’s Union. Another example is this one from The Independent on the UK.

Today’s blooper on News Breakfast featured at the start of the show at 6am and was still running at the 8am news-of-the-day summary.

Now we appreciate that the likes of James Glenday and Bridget Brennan are busy concentrating on what they have to read out next but wasn’t there anybody in the studio professional enough to give the mistake short shrift?

(*subs: please check if this is a word. I think its right but theres a chance its not.)

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Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

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