Stan Grant ‘fed up’ with racial abuse, quits ABC role
Celebrated Indigenous broadcaster Stan Grant is set to step away from the ABC, saying he has “had enough” of the “relentless racial filth” he has been subjected to and does not know when or if he will return.
A year after being made the permanent host of Q&A, Grant revealed next Monday’s episode will be his last.
Announcing his departure via a column published on ABC News, he said the racial abuse he has received in the weeks following King Charles III’s coronation had pushed him over the edge.
Stan Grant is set to leave the ABC following Monday’s Q&A episode
“Since the King’s coronation, I have seen people in the media lie and distort my words. They have tried to depict me as hate-filled. They have accused me of maligning Australia,” he wrote.
“I was invited to contribute to the ABC’s coverage as part of a discussion about the legacy of the monarchy. I pointed out that the Crown represents the invasion and theft of our land.
“In the name of the Crown, my people were segregated on missions and reserves. Police wearing the seal of the crown took children from their families. Under the crown our people were massacred.”
Grant said he had no choice but to “walk away” from the national broadcaster, declaring: “Racism is violence. And I have had enough.”
He said ABC news director Justin Stevens has been a “support and a comfort” in recent weeks, but he claimed ABC management as a whole had not shown him any public support.
“I am writing this because no one at the ABC — whose producers invited me onto their coronation coverage as a guest — has uttered one word of public support.
“Not one ABC executive has publicly refuted the lies written or spoken about me. I don’t hold any individual responsible; this is an institutional failure.
“On Monday night I will present my Q+A program, then walk away. For how long? I don’t know.”
Stevens later put out a statement, and said the abuse Grant has received is “abhorrent and unacceptable”.
“Stan is one of Australia’s best and most respected journalists and broadcasters. The ABC stands by him and condemns the attacks directed towards him,” he said.
“Stan Grant was one of a range of panelists who appeared during the 6 May Coronation coverage at the invitation of the ABC. He was not the instigator of the program. He was asked to participate as a Wiradjuri man to discuss his own family’s experience and the role of the monarchy in Australia in the context of Indigenous history.
“It is part of the ABC’s role to facilitate such important conversations, however confronting and uncomfortable, and to reflect the diversity of perspectives,” Stevens said.
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Lauren McNamara is a journalist at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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There is something a bit sad about the fact that we get all up in arms in the comments about WFH narratives yet when something big happens, something that really genuinely matters, there’s silence.
Where is the support for Grant from the industry aside from Stevens?
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I was subject to horrible behaviour by a senior female in an ABC newsroom because I’d come from commercial TV and she wanted to make me suffer for the gall of coming to work at the ABC when she saw me as worthless. If you don’t fit the ‘ABC mould’ you can be up against it and good people give up and leave. Hence Stan receiving no support. The organisation is lacking culturally. Culture comes from the top.
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You can be outraged, but surely you really can’t be that surprised? I doubt there’s an industry more internally obsessed that those this website covers.
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