On the 26th of January, 2026, a makeshift bomb was thrown into a crowd of Invasion Day protestors at Forrest Chase, a common meeting place for protests in Boorloo, Western Australia. To some friends present, it looked just like a water bottle was thrown into the crowd.

The West Australian, A Seven West-owned newspaper and one of the largest in the state, used Facebook on the 27th of January to claim that “tensions flared” as protests were evacuated “following a suspected homemade bomb”. Comments were left unmoderated, which allowed anti-protest sentiment to fester. The more popular post that day, accompanied by the label “BREAKING”, read: “WA teacher who birthed student’s baby pleads guilty”. The story offered more active language, more warnings, and even a bigger appearance on the front page of the newspaper than the attempted terror attack.

Growing up in Binjarep Noongar country, I regularly heard from disgruntled family members, sheep farmers, trade unionists, nurses, miners, etc., that those “over East” do not care about us. As much as this can make people over East laugh, once you live out West it is hard to not understand where the sentiment is coming from. The Guardian Australia does not have a reporter based in Western Australia. Protests against Alcoa’s suspected illegal clearances were largely ignored by the national media until an “unprecedented” fine from the Western Australian government went through. Every election cycle, federal funding for train stations, hospitals and education that would have been more needed ten years before could only be promised in a party’s final attempt to cling on to votes.

It might appear obvious to say, but a lot of what happens in Western Australia is a reflection of the rest of Australia. WA disproportionately represents the country in child removals, the housing crisis and carbon emissions. It feels odd for the mainstream “progressive outlet” to not even station a reporter there, considering so many key progressive concerns are at their most extreme there. Yet, considering the state of mainstream WA media, it’s hard to put up a defense.

The Alcoa illegal clearing was at least covered by the Guardian and the ABC. A Pittsburgh-based newspaper also reported on the fine. All three reference scientists who have long been against mining, First Nations’ testimony, and the community outcry that existed before 2026, all without a paywall. The West Australian, for its part, published a Facebook post with the lede “Alcoa Australia has been slapped with an ‘unprecedented’ penalty to remediate land it cleared without permission in the Perth Hills, but mining is allowed to continue”, but locked the article behind a paywall.

This is not to say this is the fault of WA journalists. Peter Milne from Boiling Cold, a Western Australian newspaper focusing on climate, has long been reporting on what is happening in WA around big companies Alcoa and Woodside. The National Indigenous Times regularly reports on issues occurring in different countries across the state. Jesse Noakes, founder and reporter of the WA-based independent media organisation Last Place on Earth, has noted that media organisations would often ignore his concerns, only for them to lead to become major stories in national newsrooms:

It is very hard to historically get national interest in WA in spite of the fact a lot of the issues here are significantly exasperated national issues.

It should be noted that Noakes has claimed an improvement within the past few years, with national media noticing the way Western Australia “is substantially and disproportionately contributing to crises at a national and global level without a sufficient or sustained focus”.

Environmental degradation is just one of many injustices the West’s media has failed to report. In the same week as the attempted terror attack, two teenage boys were killed, in what police called a murder-suicide. Because the two boys attended an elite school and the deaths occurred in one of the most affluent areas, ABC WA felt the need for their report to include this as an important element of the story. News.com focused on the experience of parents raising Autistic children, even quoting someone who said it could “take a toll.” 

Seven West Media’s other publication, PerthNow, did lead with a statement from the Human Rights Commission that reflected a tad bit more a disability perspective. The West Australian’s article pointed to Premier Roger Cook’s resistance to a coronal report.  It is however worth noting that Seven West Media published an article with the headline “Perth family terrorised by 10yr old with autism & ADHD” as far back as 2023. The media had set a precedent towards disability long before this recent tragedy.

The conservative bent of Western Australia’s media ecosystem goes well beyond these past few years. Academic analysis published in a 2005 article in Current Issues in Criminal Justice concluded that the state’s media consistently showed a populist approach to covering crime. The Health Promotion of Australia in 2019 found that journalism preferred sensationalism over  community safety. A 2022 article in the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health found that media reporting on domestic violence in regional communities also relied on sensationalism, as well as stereotyping.

It is hard not to see the cycle continue. Western Australian born Ben Roberts-Smith will be facing criminal charges for alleged killings of unarmed people in Afghanistan. The West Australian ran the headline claiming that we should not “turn back on a decorated hero”. By contrast, there has been little reporting by mainstream WA media on the Aboriginal woman who died in Bandyap Women’s Prison. The state’s media should not turn its back on the people in Kalgoorlie dying waiting for houses that are empty. It should not turn its back on Alcoa doubling their mercury emissions. It should not turn its back on the growing cases of police brutality in Broome.

Independent media outlets holding institutions to account have been gaining prominence over the past year, with organisations like Deepcut, Ette Media and Lamestream speaking to a frustrated media audience. However, against the history of progressive outlets ignoring the work and plight of people in the West, WA independent journalists have something else to offer.

The focus of Last Place on Earth was always WA. The motive, Noakes says, was that despite advocacy and activism from different communities, issues were not getting the attention they deserved. He mentions his piece on the empty housing in regional Western Australia, an issue on which he had been trying to get national media attention for several years. After no pick up, he decided he would go himself to promote these working people’s stories. “I just went, it’s only a six hour drive”.

Noakes admires the work of the progressive platforms in Australia. However if they do not focus on the injustices in WA, despite claiming to care about the issues, then it lets the other organisations “off the hook”.

To consider the other side, there are of course the changes in traditional media, and the loss of resourcing. People consume the news differently now, and are drawn to human-led coverage with a subjective angle. That is if you believe publications like the ABC were ever objective to begin with. These news outlets may just not have the budget to base reporters in the state with the highest rent increases in the country. However, Noakes says this is simply a “matter of priority”. It is further worth noting that the National Indigenous Times appears to have the resources to base staff in WA, regularly covering regional areas, too.

It may be true that those over East do not think of the people in WA as a priority, even if they are beginning to hold West coast billionaire lobbyists to account. But the people in WA think of people in WA as a priority. They are reporting on the many First Nations peoples experiencing cultural genocide and brutality from the state and the companies that get away with it. They are continuing to drive hours to listen to people left stranded by bureaucracy. They are continuing to dedicate their work to the climate and keeping an eye on gas plants that add to the continent’s emissions. It’s time to stop pretending that “resourcing” is the issue, for we know it’s not the truth.