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.

Who should we trust more? The ABC’s seasoned, experienced and respected national politics reporter Jane Norman or the person in Aunty’s graphics department who we can only assume is also seasoned and experienced but because they are not in the public eye like Norman, is understandably not as respected? Not knowing who it is doesn’t help.

Our MB compilers were forced to pose such a question when they spotted the recent 7pm bulletin where Norman, covering recent opinion polls, declared the Labor had retained the primary vote lead in both Newspoll and Redbridge and One Nation’s primary vote had dropped in both.

“Someone has got it wrong,” our MB compilers giggled as they clinked their Bundaberg rum and coke schooners together and were rather chuffed seeing they were unusually short of good column material. And what had they spied to make such a claim? This.

One of our team who passed state-school maths quickly made the point that if the Redbridge Group results are correct, One Nation’s primary vote went up in the latest figures, contradicting what Norman was saying on screen. And seeing the graphic is suggesting the previous Redbridge figures were Labor on 28 and Aunty Pauline’s white indigenous One Nation mob were on 27, Labor retained, rather than regained, primacy!

The chart, of course, should have shown One Nation in Redbridge shedding two points from their previous 31 result.

So on this occasion, MB awards Ms Norman a green dinosaur stamp for accuracy.

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Here’s another recent silly yet still annoying mistake from our national broadcaster. MB and its senior sibling, Media Glass House, would like a buck for every time they’ve declared its/it’s/its’ high time the apostrophe in its words should be scrapped.

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Here’s one we kept aside for a little while as we gathered little slipups to make our dear Aunty the only focus of this MB post. ABC News Online recently ran a story about the problem Tasmania faces to maintain population growth. (below)

It started off by saying that the Tasmanian Government claimed to be “on track to meet a target of 650,000 people by 2050”.

What it didn’t tell readers at that point was the current population figure for the state at this point.

Our Media Glass House teams thought that might just be a pretty simple and very relevant snippet of info to help put readers the whole problem into context. Demanding little buggers aren’t they?

The story went on to cite numerous sources of information and to quote authoritative commentators and government representatives giving their views about the state’s population problems and the various influencing factors at play. There were even several fact-packed tables and graphs.

But not a single mention of the current population figure in almost 60 p

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