In the past few days our Media Glass House researchers have yet again been asking themselves a key question about 21st century media coverage.
To strip away the high-level technical terminology, their question comes down to: Why the fuck is anyone still bothering with court room sketch artists?
The question arose once more this week as a result of the appeal by convicted “mushroom murderer” Erin Patterson being heard in a Victorian court.
Our reader would no doubt recall Patterson being convicted last year of the murder of three of her relatives who consumed a lunch at her house in 2023 – beef wellington meals she had made with poisonous mushrooms as an ingredient.
Below are snaps of her taken either before or during her trial last year and published by AAP, The Australian, the BBC, and Nine News.
These are the images created by court room sketch artists and used by different outlets during her trial.
The main image at the top of this page is one of the current sketches drawn from Paterson’s appearance via video link to the appeal court hearing.
While not wishing to disparage the skills of the artists involved, our MGH teams suggest that in this day and age, and with the advent of AI, news consumers might enjoy images of Patterson that are, as they put it, of a different quality.
We leave it up to our reader to make up their own mind.
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News Crap Australia is supposed to be a news organisation delivering factual and unbiased news in the news pages of its newspapers to news consumers across Australia.
Yet every now and then (like, just about daily) the Murdoch media can’t help itself and colours its coverage to reflect its own political colours – usually a bright blue in favour of the Liberal Party, or at least the far-right elements of it.
News Crap often betrays its political leanings by editorialising in news stories, not necessarily in the body of a story but in its headline.
Here is an example from a News turdbloid this week……
The story itself gave facts – but not all the facts – about the mandated reporting of taxpayer-funded travel costs by federal politicians.
But use of the word “staggering” before “$11m travel costs” gives it away.
Is the $11 million in domestic and overseas travel for 30 ministers and perhaps even some assistant ones, really “staggering”?
Did the PM really rack up $4 million in travel costs as the story says? Well in principle he did.
But readers are not told the essential fact that every minister’s total travel costs also include the cost of staff travelling with them plus other essential expenses not incurred directly by the minister.
“Staggering”? Our MGH teams think it is staggering that News Crap continues to editorialise in headlines while withholding basic facts from readers – who could use those same facts to make up their own minds – all in an effort to help attack its political opponents.
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Our MGH teams spied this letter to the editor earlier this week in News Crap Australia’s daily Adelaide turdbloid The Advertiser.
In it the letter writer lauded SA resident Lord Alexander Downer of Adelaide Hills, who occasionally dispenses his unique wisdom in the columns of this authoritative news website.
The writer went as far as suggesting His Lordship should return to the ranks of political leadership in our nation.
Our MGH researchers have blanked out the author’s name because they believe he may well be in a fragile state, perhaps not 100% in touch with reality.
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