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.

On a recent trip to Sydeney, one of our bitter, old and twisted MB compilers grabbed a copy of The Sun-Herald and eagerly sought out some silly little errors to have fun with.

So, as Julie Andrews once said “let’s start at the very beginning” why not start with a closer look at the edition’s splash last Sunday, shall we? (above and below).

And before we have our spray, here’s one meaning of boilover our good friend AI got for us…

We suspect whoever wrote that heading doesn’t know much about politics or polling. The week before last Saturday’s Farrer outcome, the polls had the One Nation candidate David Farley more or less equal on primary votes with the popular repeat Independent Michelle Milthorpe. On those figures One Nation and Farley were going to win simply because the National and Liberal Parties were preferencing Farley. And seeing he ended up with a primary vote above 40 per cent, he’s now on a very healthy margin. It’s all basic politics maths really. And an understanding of compulsory preferential voting.

Summary: anyone with a reasonable grasp of such matters would not call the Farrer result a boilover. It was totally expected.

Not far inside the paper, James Massola in his Farrer outcome analysis reminded us that One Nation had won “a swag of seats” at the recent South Australia state poll.

With this definition of swag in mind…

Oh, a large number or many seats! One Nation won four seats in SA a few months ago. Now it’s true that Aunty Pauline and her white indigenous One Nation mob have a certain swagger going after that result and their win in Farrer, but their result in SA was not a swag of seats.

Also not far inside the same edition Pete Hegseth was described as the US secretary of defence. He’s been the War Secretary in charge of the Department of War for quite some time. The Heralds are far from alone in doing this but if Seth Pisshead wants to be known as the Secretary of War, why not let him? It was a disgraceful decision from just one of the clowns in the worst administration the US has ever suffered under, so why let him off the hook?

At least the Herald used the Australian style, namely defence and not defense, so well done, we guess. Well, apart from getting his surname wrong! It’s Hegseth!

***

Our MB researchers have a PPP (particular pet peeve) with ABC News Online and its occasional habit of confusing news consumers about what day it is.

An example is the story on its website this morning (Thursday) about the deal done by the Queensland Government to keep the four-day NRL Magic Round footy festival in Brisbane until 2032. (below)

The story was filed and uploaded yesterday (Wednesday) so the “tomorrow” it cites is actually today.

When the national broadcaster can’t be bothered with a little bit of editing each morning to refresh its online “news”, it has the potential to confuse readers, some of whom may well turn up tomorrow (Friday) at the Magic Round to find a full day of its has magically disappeared already.

Surely replacing “tomorrow” with “tonight” is not a big ask. Maybe using “Thursday” from the get-go might be more sensible if a cash-starved Aunty is short of the staff it needs to look as professional as possible ?

The other issue in the story of concern to our MB teams was the LNP government’s silence on how much the “deal” had costs Queensland taxpayers.

No doubt it is “commercial in confidence”, so taxpayers may never know just how much of their hard-earned will help prop up the event. But that’s a separate PPP.

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