Here’s a a little quiz; what is the difference between an Aussie soldier killed in Afghanistan while protecting the values of our society, a young child taken too early by an untreatable disease, a blameless road toll victim, and a cowardly, violent convicted young thug stupid enough to fatally injure himself while trying to rob a pub?

According to the Townsville Bulletin, there’s no difference at all - all of them are equally afforded front page eulogistic treatment.

As a community, we’re now accustomed to an intellectual slap in the face from the Townsville Bulletin, but this week, the paper gave the community an emotional kick in the crutch for which it owes its dwindling number of readers a public apology. 

You will never find greater proof that the Townsville Bulletin is a totally out-of-touch, confused ethics-free zone than the paper’s astounding, lop-sided – whether through incompetence or pernicious pursuit of an illusory audience – than the laudatory front page coverage of the death of the violent and cowardly young thug Reedon Jack Santo.

The Magpie follows this disheartening paper trail here in this week’s nest.

Also, a long-serving senior bureaucrat/business executive is leaving town (don’t get your hopes up, Mullet, it isn’t Ray Burton) and the scramble to get his (rumoured $200K+) seat on the gravy train has already started.

Overseas, the Pope pushes off, and in Australia, Joolya pushes on … deeper and deeper into the political swamp, prompting both Bentley and Pickering to exercise their delightfully poisoned pens ... it's all here at www.townsvillemagpie.com.au

Here is a disgraceful but perfect example of why I resigned from the Townsville Bulletin. It typifies the sort of story much beloved of News Ltd and of former editor Peter Typo Gleeson, but which I point blank refused to do. Remember this front page last week?

Yes, that same Townsville Bulletin which never tires of pompously telling us it represents and reflects ‘community values and expectations’, and is this community’s ‘opinion leader’.

It is also the paper that is making as much hyped-up mileage out of youth crime and associated law and order issues. It doesn't come much more hypocritical than this.

In case you didn't (or don't) read the Townsville Bulletin, here’s what has happened.

In the early hours of Wednesday, February 20, Reedon Jack Santo, 23, along with an unspecified relative and one or two other thugs, decided to burgle the Riverview Tavern at Riverside Gardens. It is reported they stole a car for their exploit.

But while attempting to enter the closed hotel, Santo had the bright idea of punching his way in through some plate glass, resulting in him suffering a severely severed artery. His mates panicked and scuttled  away, leaving him to his own devices. Santo managed to make it about 50m back towards the stolen car before collapsing. Unnamed relatives somehow got quickly to scene, and rushed him to the nearby hospital, but he had bled to death in that time. 

Yes, a tragedy by measure.  

The initial story (read it here) was fairly straightforward, and it was obvious that the reporter was, quite reasonably, going to concentrate on Santo’s abandonment by his mates.

But as always, the Townsville Bulletin style is to always go one step too far while milking a yarn for every last ounce of turgid bullshit. So this is the unquestioning story we got on the next day. But all this could easily have been let slide if inside the paper -  but, no, again that one step too far - the front page.

This from a paper which laughably styles itself the community’s opinion leader reflective of Townsville’s values and is – by golly, yes, don’t you worry about that – tough on youth crime.

If all this sounds a bit over the top, consider this.

At 23, Reedon Jack Santo was already well into a life of crime, including incredible violence – and The Bulletin bloody well knew it. 

What makes this such a travesty in just this.

It is this story carried in the Townsville Bulletin in 2009, and of which the reporter and editor would have been well aware (although it may have been missed by the sub-editors in Brisbane, who have no community memory of what happens up here).

It is a report of a sentencing hearing, when Santo was given a four year jail term for the cowardly unprovoked attack from behind on a couple walking along a Mackay Street at night.  Yelling racist insults, Santo continually stomped and kicked his victim. When the man’s partner tried to shield him, Santo’s mother challenged her to a fight and ripped off the woman’s blouse and bra. The woman still managed to reach her partner, throwing herself across him to shield the continuing stomping. Santo then started viciously kicking her about the head and body, failing to stop even when his own companions tried to get him to do so. Kind heart? Loving kid? Wrong crowd?

It is informative to note that at the time of the 2009 sentencing Santo was on probation AND a suspended sentence for previous crimes. It is possible he was on parole for these matters when he died. So much for ‘a kid with a heart of gold’ and other predictable, skewed (and cherry picked) comments. And, what, fell in with the wrong crowd?  The evidence is that Santo, and at least one of his closest relatives, were the wrong crowd.

Unbelievably, The Bulletin has afforded a violent convicted criminal who died by his own hand during a pub break-in the same eulogistic treatment as courageous fallen diggers and blameless victims of life’s tragedies. 

(A small technical note: on page 102 of The 'Pie's News Ltd style book, under Honorifics, journalists are instructed that 'Mr' is not to be used for 'participating sportsmen/women, artists, actors, authors, musicians, convicted criminals, and the long dead'.  You don't become 'unconvicted' just because you're dead, and the story is the tragic outcome of a criminal enterprise.  

But let’s be straight about this, this is not speaking ill of the dead, Santo’s record speaks for itself. 

No, it is about the totally irresponsible poor judgment of a newspaper more and more disconnected from this community. Start to finish, a selective coverage which almost amounts to a soaring eulogy of which the paper should be ashamed.

The Townsville Bulletin owes a general apology to this community, and a specific apology to two people at least, over the undisguised spin of the reporting. Santo’s Mackay victims will live with his cowardly actions for the rest of their lives. The paper might even throw in a special mention to the person whose car was stolen for the Riverway robbery – why not, it’s one of those youth-crime-wave-stolen-car-shock-horrors that are beaten up daily in the thin-as-gruel news pages.

There may be those of you who reckon The Magpie bangs on too much about our only local daily paper, but until now the Bulletin had no one to examine them and expose their hypocrisy and addled-headed, arrogant, anti-community bumbling journalism.

Well, now they have. And The Magpie won’t be stopping his close examination of their poisonous stories. There are still some good people working for the Bully- certainly one who would make a fine editor - but when coverage like this is allowed to be blithely printed as serious journalism (ha!) then Paul Keating’s famous phrase comes to mind … ‘unrepresentative swill’.

Other matters.

Ken Diehm - going west ... 

The Magpie is told that long-serving bureaucrat Ken Diehm is upping sticks and heading west. The ‘Pie understands the boss of Townsville Water is the new CEO of the Geraldton Council., north of Perth. And good luck to the likeable Mr Diehm – he must be likable, he’s never featured in this blog heh heh heh – but of abiding interest to those of us staying eastside is his successor.

The job is worth – sorry, that should be ‘pays’ – somewhere in the vicinity of $200K+, so the scrabbling has already started. 

Dawson Wilkie - heading up?

The ‘Pie hears that a certain Dawson Wilkie, currently with the Townsville Chamber of Commerce amongst other chores, is panting heavily about the prospect and has shot his hand up already. Dawson is well entrenched on the public service/administration merry-go-round, and has a strong background in engineering. He worked a stint for John Bearne's former construction business. And if he is appointed, Mayor Mullet will no doubt be clapping her hands in pleasure – The ‘Pie is told that Mr Wilkie has in the past been known to offer her some sage advice in her political career. Which, given our winsome mayor’s erratic political history, leaves one to wonder if Dawson’s advice was dud, or she just didn’t take it.

Interesting news that Castle Hill has been named as the city’s oldest icon, The ‘Pie always thought that that honour went to Jack Wilson but even our former councilor Jazzman Jack doesn’t look quite 330 million years old. But he’s probably still just as hard to get up in the morning.

On the broader canvas The Pope has pushed off, and it has been revealed – to use The Astonisher’s favourite grown-up word – that his resignation was foretold in this German cartoon late last year.

The caption was the usual German thigh slapper along the lines 'Holy Moley, I'll resign tomorrow'. Quell droll.

According to some, Benedict buggering off (poor choice of phrase perhaps) is the good news; the bad news is there'll be another Pope along soon. The job ad is out already.

And to The Magpie's Catholic friends out there, just remember Salman Rushdie's words: 'No one has the right to not be offended'. (And look, Gonzo, The 'Pie is trying to do his best to insult everyone, but let the old bird know who he's missed).

The redoubtable Larry Pickering managed to savage two of his favourite targets in one hit with this.

And on the subject of Labor, Joolya has managed the tricky feat of pissing off people in two locations at once by giving both groups federal money.

In the strangest strategy she has yet come up with, her foray into western Sydney was about as sincere and genuine as KRudd’s infamous faux working class clunker ‘…fair shake of the sauce bottle’. 

Fairfax Newspapers funnyman Mike Carlton suggested that Joolya’s itinerary should include ‘a drive-by shooting at Whalan,  a two-hour traffic jam on the M4 motorway at Prospect and a stint as head chef  at a Bunnings sausage sizzle.'According to Carlton, a spokesman for the PM said, ‘The Prime Minister wants hard working Aussie families to understand that it’s not just Tony Abbott who can indulge in fatuous and condescending campaign stunts for the TV cameras’.

You are coming back to your best, Mr Carlton.

This is the same PM who adopted what The ‘Pie’s old Nana used to call a ‘ creeping jesus’ drone to declare she would not be campaigning until mid-August, and until then, she would be ‘governing’.  But even when she is obviously campaigning, she manages to cock that up, too.

She even pulled off the remarkable feat of  losing votes in two states when announcing she was giving them both dollops of federal cash. But what she did was  announce a piddling $120million in flood relief for devastated Queensland towns still under water, and $400million for western Sydney because that area ‘might’ get flooded – sometime in the next century or so. Queenslanders were disgusted – and as usual, Bentley nails it ….  

… while the good denizens west of Parramatta aren’t easily fooled, if at all, and they immediately saw all this hoopla for what it is … it was so ill thought out that the dangers of raising Warragamba Dam’s main wall were quickly aired. One Baldrick Esq must be her cunning plan strategist. It’s all so phoney, start to finish, and the smell of desperation is all about.

Julia Gillard now finds herself in the position of the military leader whose troops would follow him anywhere … mainly out of curiosity.