The Week in the West: Folks, they've done it again
Sexy Santas are quality clickbait.
Folks, they’ve done it again. Finger on the public pulse, stiletto on the jugular as always, Seven West know what the punters want, and what they want is Sexy Santas. Everyone else knows it too. The prurient headlines in the Financial Review, The Guardian, News Ltd and as far afield as The New York Post just go to show that short skirts and santa hats are still quality clickbait in 2024. For all the uproar about the “cringe” and “inappropriate” performance, at the end of the day everyone else was pretty happy to run an extremely grainy screengrab of some dancers (see above) as a pretext for more media criticism of Seven’s culture problem (see below).
The context for the cock-up and its coverage was a serious reshuffle at Seven that appointed women to key positions for the first time. Coming in response to endless allegations about Seven’s mistreatment of women, the new hires have been seen by some as an attempt to draw a line under an era of bad behaviour and its recent ramifications. But while Sarah Jane-Tasker may have been left on deck to clean up the mess, the toxic men have only moved upstairs, with Chris Dore becoming permanent editor-in-chief of WA Newspapers despite losing his last editing gig due to his alleged behaviour towards women. So launching your new female leads with a Christmas cabaret might somewhat undercut the attempted pivot – but the woke West’s #MeToo misfire is nothing compared to their blazing hypocrisy on First Nations issues.
As we wrote during the week, the West has operated a consistent but thin veneer of social justice, particularly on Indigenous issues. Under its previous editor, the paper editorialised to change the date of Australia Day while running an annual front page in Noongar language for Reconciliation Week. It led campaigns on Aboriginal homelessness and youth detention, while providing Nyungar-Nyiyaparli-Yamatji academic Emma Garlett with an in-house video vertical called #PaintItBlak.
Jesse Noakes
While this SJW skin has been genuinely progressive on key issues at times, when it comes up against the beating heart of Seven West’s mining and fossil fuel money, there’s no contest. The West was milquetoast on the Voice and killed off WA’s cultural heritage reforms pretty much by itself. But it really outdid itself recently following the Section 10 imbroglio in NSW, which it led with earlier than any east coast outlet and really set the tone for the hysterical attack on Tanya Plibersek that has ensued. It was on display again last week, when The West only covered the evidence from the gas lobby at a Senate inquiry in Perth on Monday, ignoring the explosive testimony from the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation about the ways traditional custodians are kept silent about Woodside’s expansion plans. Even The Australian led with those revelations, but the West’s selective attention to Aboriginal issues should leave no one in any doubt that any cultural shift is largely cosmetic.
