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23-05-2023
Bureau Report + Agencies
SYDNEY/ MELBOURNE: One of Australia’s top television journalists has opened a bout of national soul-searching by quitting his show over the racist abuse he faces as an Indigenous man in the spotlight.
An award-winning journalist with the ABC, Stan Grant said the national broadcaster had lodged a complaint with 
Twitter about the “relentless racial filth” he endured but he added the media itself “lie and distort my words” and depicted him as “hate-filled” after he raised Britain’s colonial persecution of Indigenous Australians during the ABC’s coverage of King Charles III’s coronation.
“I pointed out that the crown represents the invasion and theft of our land,” Grant said in an article published Friday on ABC’s website.
“Police wearing the seal of the crown took children from their families. Under the crown our people were massacred.”
His coronation commentary was heavily criticized as being one-sided and inappropriate by some conservative media.
Grant said he spoke out of love for Australia because he needed to tell the truth that Indigenous people still have the highest rates of imprisonment and poverty.
The 59-year-old announced he would walk away as a presenter after the next episode of the ABC’s Q+A current affairs discussion program on Monday.
Grant took his own employer to task.
“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,” he said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered his support to Grant telling journalists: “You can have respect for different views without engaging in vilification.”
ABC news director Justin Stevens also issued a statement backing Grant, saying he faced “grotesque racial abuse, including threats to his safety”.
Osman Faruqi, culture news editor for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, who previously worked at the ABC, said staffing at the national broadcaster was not representative of the cultural mix of Australia but the issue went further than the national broadcaster, he said in an opinion piece on Saturday.
