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.

As our reader would know, Mediocre Bytes compilers have sometimes observed that a single episode of Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletin could easily fill an entire column.

No, we don’t claim every night! That would be a gross exaggeration, something we might develop ourselves if we keep watching that Sunshine State bulletin for much longer. Hyperbole, shoddy journalism and some simple mistakes are what we look for. But as we’ve just said, not every night!

Well, apart from last night’s (Friday’s bulletin) perhaps and its online edition. Let’s start with the latter, and the damage it could have done if readers didn’t bother clicking on it.

Yes, we know other states are celebrating Chuckie’s birthday and perhaps there’ll be a king tide around the nation as well! But surely a simple tweak or two was warranted seeing Queensland doesn’t honour Jug Ears with a day off on Monday. That strip at the bottom could have easily been “The likely weather for the long weekend down south”. It would have fitted perfectly. Trust us please; some of us used to be doctors. Even the top bit could have been “The weather in other capitals celebrating the king’s birthday”.

This was, after all, being read almost entirely by Queenslanders, which is why we’re just a little concerned that the state’s royalists might have just read the front-page plug and are going to rush out their foldaway tables to set up street parties on Monday, put up red, white and blue bunting everywhere and wave a quarter of the Australian flag around instead of going to work or taking their kids to school. A lot of Queenslanders might have taken Monday off anyway, thinking it was the Queensland Day long weekend. So for that reason as well, it would probably have been sound, educational, journalism, to change those words as suggested above.

Okay, okay! A bit picky as we sometimes are but these next ones are better.

This one is about using words with their right meanings. In a yarn on new Queensland laws on e-bikes/scooters being passed in state parliament, newsreader Melissa Downes said the new rules would come into effect on July 1 “despite Labor voting them down”.

The old hacks who compile this column fondly remember when “voting something down” meant a party on its own or in cahoots with others defeated proposed legislation. Kicked it to the kerb. Knocked it on the head. Killed it stone dead. Ooh, maybe it still does, if the AI meaning below – just one of the one we looked at – is still correct. Then again, what has modern 21st journalism got to do with honouring long-established word meanings anyway?

And our oldest bitter, old hack, compiler will leave alone the use of reforms there. The battle to keep the original meaning of that was lost decades ago.

The next one was of particular interest to those among our compilers who were also once GPs, as we mentioned above. The pre-bulletin promos for last night’s 6pm edition talked of peasant Andy Windsor-Sausage sporting a bruised eye.

“If that’s a bruised eye, I’ve got a 14-inch cock,” one of the team shouted, suggesting he was middle-aged before imperial measures were replaced.

Luckily, in the 6pm bulletin, Melissa and reporter Josh Bavas showed the extent of their own medical training and rightly talked of Andy’s “heavily bruised face” and “purple cheek”.

Reader, you are spot on. Finally, where’s an example of the overblown hyperbole that’s also common on these nightly bulletins? Well, the answer is simple: the words “heart-stopping vision” were not used last night, as is often the case.

But don’t fret. Any network that can come up with “the world’s greatest rivalry” to describe the current Origin-of-the-Species battle between Queensland and NSW will amaze us soon enough with “incredible” new words and phrases to keep its viewers on tenterhooks ….or is that now tenderhooks?

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