Yes, oh yes – it’s Friday and the Brisbane Times, that paragon of journalistic flair, is at it again. Behold today’s top stories:
1. Mother injects baby with faeces water
2. ‘Disrespectful son’ locked in room for 12 years
4. Marriage ‘won’t last six months’
5. Pregnant 11yo seeks abortion
Personally, I feel the devotion of multiple news articles to Maria Sharapova’s shirt marks a new low in reporting standards. To quote Xander of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame: and on the day the words ‘flimsy excuse’ were redefined, we sat and watched in awe.
Well, sat and read, anyway. You get the idea.
shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows 
I just can’t get the fuss over that tennis players attire at all, It’s not as is she has been playing in a very short skirt sans underwear, but frankly all gossip about sports people leaves me very cold indeed.
It was a sad day for tennis when the press decided that what Serena Williams and Anna Kornikova were wearing should rate equally with how they played. Now we have tennis fashion! Stupid media.
I don’t know why you included the story about a pregnant 11 year old in here. The poor girl was raped by her uncle and fell pregnant, and the Romanian Government is denying her an abortion because she’s past her first trimester.
It’s a complicated ethical case and quite sad for the poor child involved. I can’t see why you seem to see it fit for ridicule.
Furthermore, since those are the top stories, they’re chosen by audience readership – NOT the newspaper. Most of these stories come straight off national or international newsfeeds anyway. So really you should be criticising society, not the Brisbane Times.
I know that the 11yo story is appalling, and really, I wasn’t laughing at it. I’ve put up a few other posts about the Brisbane Times top stories and commented that they always involve something awful or bizzare – in this case, an excruciatingly sad story plus four stupid ones.
I also know it’s the readership that chooses the top 5 stories, but the point I’m trying to make abot the Brisbane Times (if there is a point) is that they always have an abundance of such stories in the first place. The Age and the SMH online have exactly the same readership as the three sites are linked, but the Brisbane Times top stories almost never mirror the other Fairfax headlines: it’s always something savage, dumb or titilating.