Hun hatchet. As far as thinly veiled political hatchets go, today’s Herald Sun splash smearing Victorian Labor opposition leader Daniel Andrews has got to take the cake for the most dubious in recent memory.

“Dad’s Crash Dismay” screamed the people’s paper in about 190-point font, accompanied by a prominent bold red strap-line “Father slams Daniel Andrews after taxpayer-funded car driven by Labor leader’s wife collides with his son.”

Journalist Anthony Dowsley informed the paper’s 1.3 million readers that a crash between a car driven by Catherine Andrews and teenage cyclist Ryan Meuleman — the incident occurred nine days ago in the seaside hamlet of Blairgowrie — was newsworthy because there had been no direct contact between the opposition leader and the boy and, even more tenuously, that the Andrews family had failed to release a public statement.

The boy’s father was trotted out to express his disappointment in the Andrews’ “absolute silence” while Ryan was recovering in hospital.

But as Andrews spokesperson Sally Finlay pointed out (buried by Dowsley on paragraph 24 inside the paper), the Andrews had in fact been in regular contact with local police to check on the boy’s condition. Police had told the couple that due to privacy provisions they could not even release the boy’s name. And as Daniel Andrews made abundantly clear, his wife is a private citizen — the public interest in reporting a crash while the couple were on holidays is sketchy at best.

The detail of the incident suggests it was actually Meuleman who was in the wrong — the Herald Sun included a map that indicated Catherine Andrews took a right turn in her Ford Territory from Melbourne Road into Ridley Street and the boy rode into the path of the car from an access track.

In a justificatory editorial accompanying the piece, the leader writer (editor Damon Johnston?) claimed that Andrews should have put out a public statement on the crash, somehow comparing his lack of action to then-premier Steve Bracks’ forthrightness when his son Nick crashed a car into a tree in 2007 with twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.

The Hun also reckoned that based on the latest Newspoll data, Catherine Andrews was soon set to become Victoria’s “first lady” — a ridiculous title that’s hardly ever used — and that her husband’s aspirations to high office meant he should be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.

After its notorious David Campbell gay sauna story in 2010, Channel Seven justified the public interest by claiming it was the NSW MP’s use of a public vehicle that meant hidden camera footage outside Ken’s of Kensington should be broadcast, a rationale that quickly collapsed.

Prominent journalists and journalism academics then put their names to a letter saying the Campbell expose “demeaned journalism”. Here’s hoping a similar letter appears this time around slamming the Hun for its wafer-thin takedown of the Andrews family. — Andrew Crook

Silly season stories. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s a stupid story because nothing else is happening or if it’s just a standard news.com.au yarn. But this one about a donkey that maybe got run over by a Google Street View car is particularly terrible. But kudos to news.com.au technology editor Claire Porter for contacting Google, getting some further photos off them and also contacting a donkey academic for comment.

As Porter wrote: “Poor little donkey. Hopefully he survived the fiasco and is grazing in the very best fields Botswana has to offer”. Indeed. Have you spotted any silly season stories? Send them our way …

Subeditorial antics. What’s happened to the subbing on Rupert’s Leader suburban papers in Melbourne? One article in last week’s Moorabbin Glen Eira Leader contained references to “State Labor Health Minister David Davis” (he’s from the Liberal Party) and “Federal Liberal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek” (an ALP minister). Bizarre stuff.

Video of the day. So this preview gives absolutely nothing away, but it’s the first look at Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. It screens at 1pm this Friday AEDT.

Front page of the day. It’s not just China with a pollution problem. This eerie — but quite beautiful — front page from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Novo Vjireme discusses the country’s gas and clean air problem.