… WELL, WE NEVER!

You BUGgers out there have probably never thought about how our compilers decide whether some media fuckup should be in our Mediocre Bytes column that look at the silly little mistakes that worry us about the state of journalism or in its more serious sibling Media Glass House that confirms the worst of those fears.

We’re not sure how we decide that either – it might be that we’re often too drunk to see a clear line of separation – but there was a clarity of cataloguing for today’s topic: the dreadfully wrong use of “caught in the crossfire” on a Nine News Queensland report last night (Tuesday). And around the network, we’re guessing.

Newsreader Joel Dry kicked off the story of a former NRL star being “gunned down in a targeted attack” after …. wait for it ” …the 44-year-old was caught in the crossfire”.

Now, where the fuck did he get that phrase written for him to read out? It might have been the reporter on the scene, Massilia Aili, who finished her piece with this observation: “..tonight, yet another innocent victim caught in the crossfire”.

She also said earlier that it was this latest victim’s identity “that has caused everyone’s surprise”. Really, Massilia? Everyone? You’ll be doing promos for MAFS soon. But that’s not our beef here.

We suspect that everyone – well, almost everyone except Massilia and whoever at Nine should have been helping in her professional development – knows that being caught in a crossfire generally refers to an innocent person caught between two waring parties firing away at each other. Either with very noisy and real firearms or metaphorically.

Our Sydney shooting victim was not in a crossfire. Every shot taken at him was from “a group of men waiting outside his home”. There was no-one in his home using the butts of their own rifles to smash out windows like in a cheap western and returning fire to protect him. And was the man gunned down innocent? Yeah, maybe, but that’s not important right now.

We’ve had a lot of fun over the years with, as a general rule, tyros in the craft of journalism using words and phrases just for the fun of it, maybe? A bit of colour? Actual meaning not all that important.

But this one definitely deserved upgrading to MGH status.

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