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.

Now that our senior sibling Media Watch House remains slightly confident it has finally won a very long battle to teach subs at The Sydney Morning Herald what pages they’re working on, Mediocre Bytes though it would revisit a long campaign of its own that failed.

See that imagery at the lower-left corner (above) of a report on Nine News Queensland last weekend. It strives to convince us that Makenna Baily is on location in Sunnybank on Brisbane’s southside. A sign behind her is another clue.

Like many that have come before it, the image really doesn’t give us much of a clue where the suburb is – and you couldn’t get there using that image as your guide. The little depiction of the Brisbane River would help locals but many of these things are totally unidentifiable.

We appreciate that Nine News is keen to prove where its reporters are at, given an unfortunate decision some years ago to try to fool its audience that their news chopper was hovering over the Sunshine Coast when it was just above the news studios at Mount Coot-Tha overlooking
Brisbane city.

When we started our campaign long ago, that location imagery began full screen before scuttling off to its corner. Full-screen made it look even less practical in most cases.

At the time, when Peter Costello was head honcho at Nine Entertainment Co, we figured that maybe a darling daughter or son was doing work experience in the graphics department, perhaps at Nine News Melbourne, and with an interest in graphic arts design, came up with this location malarkey that spread around the network. And even though the journo-shoving, chicken-hearted non-leadership contender is no longer there at Nine hosted Liberal Party fundraisers, no-one’s been game to change it since.

Watered it down a bit but left in place. It really, really, does look very very silly most of the time.

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Interesting observation from the female commentator at half time in the NBL game in Melbourne last night between the Melbourne United and the Tasmanian Jack Jumpers. “It’s closer than the scoreboard indicates.” The score at the time: 42-39 to the Tasmanian side. Still, half-time in the NBL is quite long so you have to have something ready to say.

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ABC News Breakfast reporter on Monday morning on the vigil at Bondi Beach: “The minute’s silent echoed around Australia”.

A bit unfair here? Creative, colourful interpretation? The ever-changing use of English?

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