Indigenous Australian journalist steps down after ‘relentless’ racist abuse

“On social media my family and I are regularly racially mocked or abused,” he wrote. “This is not new. Barely a week goes by when I am not racially targeted.”

“My wife is targeted with abuse for being married to a Wiradjuri man,” he added, naming the Indigenous people from the central part of New South Wales state.

He also criticized the broadcaster for a lack of support.

“I am writing this because no one at the ABC — whose producers invited me onto their coronation coverage as a guest — has uttered a word of public support,” he wrote. “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.

Grant said the ABC had lodged a complaint with Twitter about racial abuse targeting him.

His announcement comes at a pivotal year for Australia’s relationship with its Indigenous population. The nation is preparing to vote in a constitutional referendum which, if successful, will establish a representative “Voice to Parliament” of First Nations leaders. The body would consult nationally with lawmakers on policy, but its advice would be nonbinding.

By many measures, Indigenous Australians are more disadvantaged than other Australians. They have an average life expectancy that is around eight years shorter and are the world’s most imprisoned population, Indigenous children are 10 times more likely to be taken into state care.

Grant has received a wave of abuse about his comments on the monarchy during a May 6 panel preceding the coronation, despite the fact that other panelists also criticized the monarchy and its continuing role as Australia’s head of state.

Grant said he had “pointed out that the crown represents the invasion and theft of our land.”

Australians have in recent years increasingly debated how they should view British colonialism. The country’s national day is Jan. 26, which marks the landing of the first fleet of British convict ships in 1788. But tens of thousands also use that date for nationwide.Invasion Dayprotests — pointing out that Indigenous history in Australia goes back at least 65,000 yearscalling for the date to be changed out of sensitivity and for an improvement in the racism and disadvantages Indigenous people face.

“In the name of the crown my people were segregated on missions and reserves,” Grant wrote. “Police wearing the seal of the crown took children from their families. Under the crown our people were massacred.

The panel was labeled “bile” by radio talk show host Ray Hadley, who was quoted in the Australian, a newspaper owned by the Murdoch family’s News Corp. Another radio talk show host, Neil Mitchell, was reported as saying that “somebody in the ABC needs to be accountable” for airing “all this bitterness about our Indigenous history” during the lead-up to the coronation. The piece was one of several in conservative media outlets targeting the panel and Grant’s comments.

News Corp. did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. A spokeswoman for Nine Entertainment, which employs Hadley and Mitchell, said it had no comment and “would make no assumptions” about Grant’s comments.

Journalist Osman Faruqi, who has also worked at the ABC, supported Grant’s comments and criticized the broadcaster’s work culture for non-White staff.

“Before I started my first role with the ABC back in 2018, almost every non-white person who had worked at the organization advised me against taking a job there,” he wrote in an opinion piece for the age newspaper, “They cited story after story of overt racism from colleagues, managers and the audience.”

“When I did start, and encountered many of the same issues I was warned about, there were a handful of older, experienced colleagues from non-white backgrounds who did their best to help the rest of us out,” he added. “One of the ones used to be Stan Grant.”

Sami Shah, every other Australian journalist who has labored for the ABC, wrote on Twitter that “half the ABC execs reading this will call him ungrateful and a sook” — an Australian term for a crybaby — “and ‘hard to work with’. The other half will commit to doing better, oversee an internal review, then move on after a PowerPoint deck is compiled.”

In a reaction to a request for remark, the ABC mentioned it “has a zero-tolerance approach to racism in the workplace” and that any problems raised are investigated.

In a commentary after Grant’s announcement, ABC information director Justin Stevens mentioned the ABC stood by way of Grant and “condemns the attacks directed toward him” after the coronation panel.

“The responsibility for the coverage lies with ABC News management, not with Stan Grant,” he mentioned. “Yet it is he who has borne the brunt of a tirade of criticism.”

Grant has many years of revel in, together with greater than a decade with CNN, the place he coated China as a senior correspondent. He could also be the writer of a number of books together with “Talking To My Country,” a memoir and dialogue of Australia’s courting with race. His newest is known as “The Queen is Dead: The Time Has Come for a Reckoning.”