Was it worth the coverage?

July 24, 2007, 5:47pm,  297 views

Prime Minister John Howard tripped today while walking into a radio station in Perth. Australan Associated Press told the country about this momentous event.

At least AAP managed to work into the same article the equally earth-shattering news that Kevin Rudd gave the wrong name for a Labor candidate.

Neither is big news, of course, but in the age of excessive media scrutiny, getting a candidate’s name wrong is probably four on the tremor scale compared with zero or one for stumbling on a footpath (unless drunk).

So it’s a little strange that The Age in its online edition highlighted the Howard trip without mentioning the Rudd gaffe, and managed to link Howard’s near fall to his age and the party leadership.

That gives some credence to Andrew Landeryou’s theory of left-wing bias and hypocrisy in reporting.