Seven West Media journalists have been embedded with climate activists on at least two occasions in recent years, despite its claim that an ABC Four Corners crew “crossed a line” when covering a protest at the home of the Woodside chief executive, Meg O’Neill, on 1 August.
In 2021 Channel Seven was similarly tipped off to a protest that blockaded Woodside’s facilities on the Burrup peninsula, flying in overnight with a cameraman and doing live crosses to Sunrise.
Two years earlier, the West Australian was given exclusive access to a secret training camp for Extinction Rebellion activists as they “practised blockading the entrance to the office of a big polluter”.
Kerry Stokes’s media empire has led the charge against the Woodside protesters and the ABC over the O’Neill protest, describing the former as extremists and “eco fanatics” and criticising the ABC for attending.
The West Australian, which dominates the state’s media, has vilified the Woodside protesters in its blanket coverage, even including in a headline the words “Teacher’s Pet” about a 19-year-old female activist and her fellow protester having been a teacher at her high school. The two say they never spoke alone while at the same school and that the headline and article implied he groomed her.
The West said in an editorial the public broadcaster was “rightly under fire” for receiving a tipoff to film the incident for an upcoming program about climate protests.
On Friday an internal ABC inquiry concluded the crew did not collude with or encourage the Woodside protesters, nor did they trespass on O’Neill’s property. The managing director, David Anderson, issued a 700-word statement on Friday defending immersive-style documentary programs and public interest journalism.
The editor-in-chief of West Australian Newspapers, Anthony De Ceglie, editorialised against the Four Corners crew and published a letter of complaint from the WA premier, Roger Cook, to the ABC chair, Ita Buttrose, on the front page of the paper.
“In the case of the alleged plot by extremist environmental activists to chain themselves to the home of Woodside Energy boss Meg O’Neill, the ABC got it very wrong,” he wrote.
Neither De Ceglie nor a spokesperson for Seven West Media responded to a request for comment on the 2021 coverage of a Woodside protest by its reporter.
On that occasion, unlike the O’Neill action – which was stymied by a big police presence before it got under way – a Seven news crew broadcast exclusive live pictures as the climate activists blocked access to Woodside’s Burrup Hub by chaining themselves to concrete barrels.
Seven’s Ben Downie reported the activists saying a new Scarborough gas project would be an emissions disaster, “equivalent to building 15 new coal power stations”.
Jesse Noakes, an activist and media adviser to Disrupt Burrup Hub, said he had worked with WA news outlets over protest coverage for years.
“What happened last Tuesday [with the O’Neill protest] was standard practice – I tipped off media about a story in advance, as I have with many previous events WA media have all covered,” he said.
The West Australian reported that two of those arrested at O’Neill’s house, Gerard Mazza and Matilda Lane-Rose, “were student and teacher at the same school”.
“They were walking the same halls at one of the most prestigious schools in Perth,” the West reported. “One as a teacher, the other a student.”
Mazza was not Lane-Rose’s teacher.
Lane-Rose told Guardian Australia she accepted the consequences for her climate action but not the treatment she received at the hands of the media.
“I’m aware that I … face legal consequences… but to be on the front page of the paper for three consecutive days was shocking,” the university student said.
“For the paper to allege on their front cover that I am clueless and that I’ve been groomed, that was something that really, really hurt.”
After Lane-Rose spoke at a press conference, the West headlines included “Rebel without a Clue”, “unrepentant eco warrior” and “Thick as Two Planks of Wood”.
Mazza told Guardian Australia he could not afford to sue the newspaper for defamation but the implication he was an abuser was devastating.
“Matilda was involved in climate activism before I was,” Mazza said. “I think it takes away her agency to suggest that she was groomed. I think there is some kind [of] campaign to portray us as terrorists or extremists.”
“They’re trying to draw attention away from the issue we’re talking about, which is the carbon and climate crisis, and trying to show a picture of us as kind of extreme or not to be trusted.”
Lane-Rose’s lawyer, Zarah Burgess, said the front page showed “just how far the state’s most powerful interests are protected by that paper”.
“When those powerful interests have nowhere else to hide, and no leg to stand on, they resort to smearing the names of two climate campaigners, for no reason other than to distract from the important cause that those campaigners are fighting for,” Burgess said.
