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.

Oh, dear! Kevin Rudd doesn’t look too happy, does he?

Having trouble rapping his head around some detailed programmatic specificity he normally arrives at in a flash because of his amazing IQ?

Perhaps he’s mentally preparing a brilliant submission – printed or oral; it wouldn’t matter – and hasn’t quite worked out whether the 24 main points should be designated as alphabetical and the sub-points inside each on the main points be numerical? Or maybe the other way around?

Hmmm… maybe. But what if he’s down in the dumps for some other reason?

And are we in Auntyland expected to read anything into how ABC News Queensland on Tuesday night used the images shown at top to go with Rudd’s announcement that he was pulling the pin on his job as ambassador to the United States a year early?

The two images bookend a short video at the start of the bulletin.

Did someone at the station’s South Bank HQ in Brisbane decide that glum was the best look to start the segment to suggest that maybe Rudd had come to the realisation that he hadn’t been a very good ambassador? We know! It’s Kevin Rudd! Scrub that possibility.

Perhaps the images were chosen to suggest he was being forced out! That’s a possibility. Who likes the bloke much anyway?

That he looks as if he’s about to burst into tears at any moment might suggest that his new hotshot job as the world’s expert on China might not the big pay hike his resignation suggests?

Maybe Donald Trump’s powerful putdown of the Rudster in the White House finally took its toll on the Albanese government who realised there had to be someone better at dealing with the world’s greatest-ever peacemaker, multiple Nobel peace prize winner-in-waiting and probably the greatest political leader this world has ever known?

“Why don’t we simply not email the bulletin’s producer and don’t ask why they selected such imagery which seemed totally out of place with the overwhelming plaudits that followed,” one of our compilers suggested.

“That way we can’t be disappointed when they don’t respond!” added another.

“Surely the way to go,” offered a third.

***

Picky! Picky! Picky!

Reporter on ABC News Queensland last night (Wednesday) talked about the 2025 Ashes series.

Perhaps we at MB know we can be sometimes be a tad pedantic about such things but it would have taken half-a-second longer to say the 2025/26 Ashes series. Not only was one of the five tests played in 2026 but it lasted one day longer than two of the 2025 Tests combined.

Are we wrong to always be wising that those engaged in the amazing craft of journalism strive to be as accurate as possible if for no other reason than to make it a habit? From little things, big things grow?

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