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.

Over the journey, Mediocre Bytes compilers have sometimes observed that a single episode of Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletin could easily fill an entire column.

To see if they are right, why not roll the tape from Tuesday night’s hour of top-shelf professional journalism?

The first mistake spotted came about a minute in, when newsreader Melissa Downes in the opening spiel on the night’s top stories told us of “less trains” on the Brisbane CityRail network during the ongoing pay dispute between the unions and the Queensland government.

The poor thing, of course, should have been made to read out “fewer trains” but then again, how long has it been since proper English as it was once did was considered important in the wonderful craft of journalism?

It’s not rocket surgery, is it? Fewer friends, fewer trains, fewer problems, fewer trains, fewer calories, fewer trains.

Let’s move about 10 minutes into the bulletin where reporter Ned Balme commits another very fundamental mistake; well, one that used to be at the top of Journalism #101 along with the misuse of less and fewer – namely saying that one vehicle collided with another. Cadets who tried that on in any newsroom in the distant past, be it in a country newsroom or a city metropolitan daily, would have been taken out the back and shot for not using the correct “when two vehicles collided.” Reporting it that way doesn’t infer guilt on one party.

Fewer than one minute later (sorry! couldn’t resist!) reporter Jessica Millward is onto that aforementioned rail passenger disruption story. “Trains were packed to the brim during peak as Queensland Rail moved to a weekend timetable,” Jessica declared.

But just not on the video of the train used to demonstrate her point. Picky? Not really. Jessica and her camera operator would not have been out talking about the afternoon peak rush so close to 6pm. It had to be the morning peak hour and they couldn’t find one of the supposedly many trains that were packed to the brim?

Well, that’s the bulletin barely started and we’ve covered three topics that Nine News could have handled more betterer. And you still want…

MORE!

Let’s move a bit further and here’s poor Melissa just before an ad break touting a plane involved “in a shocking midair disaster!” It’s a version of clickbait, isn’t it? Just when you were considering a switch to Seven News that might make lesser mistakes, you wait for this yarn. It turns out that a plane overseas had bearly (we’re just trialling that in case it ever becomes normal use) taken off when it crashed into a residential area killing three people. And the shocking mid-air disaster Melissa teased us with? Not a mention. Zilch. Nada!

Let’s finish off with the story on the cruise ship where three people have died from some rare disease passed on by rats. Courtesy of Nine News Queensland, we then got to see and hear two women from two different organisations explaining what happened.

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