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.

The compilers of Mediocre Bytes would like a dollar for every time they’ve opined that sometimes enough mistakes happen in just any one nightly broadcast of Nine News Queensland at 6pm to fill one of these columns.

Doubt that? Let’s roll the tape on the bulletin exactly as week ago and explain why newsreader Melissa Downes, not for the last time we suspect, is ruing the shit she’s forced to read out.

So how did she start that bulletin? By announcing that Iran had been BLOWN APART!

You might accept such outrageous hyperbole flowing out of the mouth of Donald Trump but it’s no way to start a news bulletin that hopes to be respected by its viewers. We’d also like a dollar for everytime we’ve suggested that the scripts poor Melissa and Joel Dry are forced to read out should not be put together by someone far more suited to writing outrageous clickbait promos for rubbish such as Botoxed at First Sight and Farmer Badly Needs a Fuck.

We’ll now move on to example two, where reporter Lauren Tomasi used the words “America’s heaviest artillery” to overlay vision of a US Air Force B1 bomber taking off to bring democracy and death, not necessarily in that order, to Iran.

We thought we’d share this especially prepared montage with Lauren.

As she can hopefully see, artillery can be self-propelled or has to be carted around war battle sites but we’re pretty sure they’ve never had wings and the only way they get off the ground is if an enemy’s artillery shell lands under them!

Example 3 now. Last year, Seth Pisshead announced he was no longer the US secretary of defense (the US spelling) and was now the secretary of WAR! Signs and stationery were changed at great cost.

So, in the interests of journalism professionalism based on the pursuit of accuracy, here’s what Nine News Queensland decided to go with.

Is Nine News helping Pisshead out here? He’s made a terrible mistake so we’ll lessen his error by still calling him by his old title?

Finally, example four! Here’s the footage of a shocked neighbour giving a running commentary on a fatal police shooting in Brisbane.

We don’t know whether this lady attended state or private schools but seeing her words were spoken, we think the artist at Nine News who provided the above would have at the very least given her the benefit of the doubt and shown her using the possessive its rather than the it is contraction.

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