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Stan Grant to leave NITV / Foxtel and join ABC

Stan Grant to oversee ABC's Indigenous Affairs Coverage and host a new Friday night current affairs show.

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Stan Grant is joining ABC News appointed to the newly-created position of Editor, Indigenous Affairs Coverage and hosting a new Friday night current affairs program.

Grant will depart NITV where he has been since 2015, and Foxtel presenting which he has done since 2013.

From December he oversees ABC News’s coverage of Indigenous affairs,  and next year  will also present a new program in the 7.30pm Friday slot, helmed by Executive Producer Jo Puccini and fill in on 7.30 for presenter Leigh Sales.

ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie said, “Stan is a Wiradjuri man with a tremendous ability to articulate his experiences and those of his people.

“As a Walkley-winning journalist, he has reported from around the world including as a correspondent with CNN International in Hong Kong and Beijing.

“His books, The Tears of Strangers and Talking to My People, are the work of a journalist and writer who is acutely aware of where he has come from as an Indigenous Australian and what the challenges are for his fellow Indigenous Australians.

“He is unrivalled for communicating the plight of those communities, as was evidenced earlier this year when he delivered an impassioned speech in the wake of ABC reporting on the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

“He described his reaction to that story as ‘an anger that comes from the certainty of being… an anger that speaks to my soul.’

“They are powerful words.

“I could not think of a better journalist to lead this important team at the ABC.”

Director of News Gaven Morris said: “Stan is one of Australia’s top journalists, a highly respected talent with extensive media experience nationally and internationally. He is also one of our leading voices in the area of Indigenous affairs. As such, he is ideally suited for both of these key roles, and we are thrilled he has agreed to take them on.

“Indigenous affairs is an area of great importance to our nation and one ABC News has always comprehensively covered. Stan will lead the way in extending and better structuring our reporting on it throughout our news and current affairs coverage.”

Grant aded, “This role, and other plans still to be announced, are about the ABC engaging in a more structured way with Indigenous issues. These issues go to the heart of the country – to who we are as Australians – and these initiatives will put the ABC at the heart of the conversation.

“It is significant and appropriate for the national broadcaster to lead this discussion among all Australians, and I am excited to be a part of it.”

Further details on ABC’s Indigenous Affairs Coverage and Grant’s new weekly current affairs show are yet to be announced.

9 Responses

  1. As an indigenous Australian who did actually watch NITV, I do believe this will improve both the ABC & NITV. NITV News had been cut to merely updates, while on the ABC, you might get “Indigenous quarter” not very often.

    So, this will provide both bigger coverage of indigenous issues on the network that most people watch (ABC), while hopefully providing more funding for an expanded indigenous news on NITV also.

    I don’t think indigenous news is so unheard of or unthought of, where narrow minded people like OzJay think that blackfellas should shuffle off into our own corner, never to be seen on mainstream channels. This is the 21st Century after all. We hear news from overseas everyday, yet we can’t hear about news from our own backyard? I am offended by such comments.

    1. You are wilfully misinterpreting what I said. I’m all for indigenous affairs being covered, but it should be covered within mainstream programming where it is more likely to have some impact on the wider world. Confining it to a niche program that will, however noble its intentions, be ignored by the vast majority, achieves nothing. In fact, all it does is provide an easy excuse as to why indigenous affairs need not be covered in general current affairs bulletins – because “there’s a place for it over there.”

      1. I agree that people would see less indigenous news on the ABC, if indigenous stories are moved from the 7pm bulletin to the new program. However, this is unlikely. More likely is that Friday’s 7pm bulletin will promote the top story on the new program, increasing that bulletin’s indigenous content.

        Also, the existence of the new program is likely to increase the amount of indigenous news on News 24, with Stan’s segments being used in the feed, and Stan no doubt appearing on ABC News Breakfast on Friday mornings.

  2. I just looked up my diary from when Stateline was axed and I referenced news reports saying that it would be replaced by stand-up comedy. A program called Friday Night Crackup was shown which was a pilot for the show. Later that year it was reported that the ABC had made a pilot for a show similar to The Project featuring Anabel Crabb which would have comedy segments. Now we hear that the replacement for Stateline will be a niche public affairs show continuing the legacy of 7:30, which means that commonsense has finally won out. Hopefully this will be the end of the ABC pushing its own peculiar brand of comedy onto viewers and that the barbarians have been stopped at the gate once and for all.

    1. I don’t see much in the way of commonsense here, and “niche” is being generous. If 7.30 is the ABC’s premiere mainstream, prime-time current affairs show, it really should run five days a week. I’d really like to know how the ABC can truly justify replacing one episode a week, or one-fifth of the show’s output, with a show that is designed to service less than 3% of the country’s population. This is a prime-time program that is virtually guaranteed to have no measurable audience. I’m all for the ABC producing programs for the indigenous audience, but it needs to be in ways that will actually appeal to that audience at the same time as honouring he broadcasters broader responsibilities to the general audience.

        1. You do far more to challenge narrow views by integrating reports on indigenous affairs into mainstream current affairs than by neatly confining it to ghetto programs.

          1. I may have missed it, but where does it state that Stan Grant is presenting an indigenous focussed current affairs ‘ghetto’ programme on Fridays? All I saw was that he’s the new Editor for Indigenous Affairs coverage and that he’ll be presenting a new programme on Fridays, as well as fill in for Leigh on 7.30. I dare say Stan is a far more accomplished journalist and can cover more than just indigenous issues.

            I think this is a fantastic appointment. As much as NITV has a national reach, Stan deserves a bigger audience. This should give that to him.

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