Stan Grant (journalist)


Stan Grant is a television news and political journalist, television presenter, author of several best-selling non-fiction books and filmmaker. A Wiradjuri man, as of 2020 he is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Indigenous and international affairs analyst, occasional presenter on ABC TV and Al Jazeera, and Professor of Global Affairs at Griffith University in Queensland.

Early years

Grant was born on 30 September 1963 in Griffith, New South Wales, the son of Stan Grant Sr, an elder of the Wiradjuri people. The Wiradjuri are an Aboriginal Australian people from the south-west inland region of New South Wales. The Wiradjuri also have roots in inner Victoria, which is where he spent much of his childhood.
Grant graduated from the Australian National University.

Career

Journalism

Grant has more than 30 years of experience working in broadcast radio and television news and current affairs. He spent several years as a news presenter on the Australian Macquarie Radio Network, Seven, SBS, along with a long-term stint at CNN International as a Senior International Correspondent in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Beijing, before starting with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

1990s – 2012

In 1994, as host of the Seven Network current affairs programme Real Life he won the Logie Award for Most Popular Current Affairs Programme.
In 2007 he took on the role of co-presenter of the one-hour SBS World News Australia bulletin, and also presented ABC Local Radio's Indigenous programme Speaking Out. In December 2007, Grant resigned from SBS World News Australia and was replaced by Anton Enus.
In 2009 Grant was appointed UAE correspondent for CNN. Based in CNN's new Abu Dhabi news-gathering and production centre, Grant covered stories from both the UAE and the surrounding region and hosted the programme Prism.

2012: NITV and pay TV

Grant returned to Australia in 2012 to help launch SBS' new National Indigenous Television channel, and in 2013 hosted a nightly late night news programme NewsNight for Sky News Australia, which aired weeknights at 11pm. From 2014 he started hosting Sky News Australia's Reporting Live with Stan Grant at 6pm, a nightly news programme reporting on the serious news stories of the day, and in April of that year he hosted Crimes that Shook Australia, a six-part television drama series broadcast on Foxtel.

2015: Viral speech

In 2015 Grant took part in a public debate at the IQ2 stage of The Ethics Centre, with immigration lawyer Pallavi Sinha, Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi and actor Jack Thompson to argue for or against the topic “Racism is destroying the Australian dream”. He told of the impact of colonisation on Indigenous Australians, past and present. He argued that "the Australian Dream" was based upon racism, mentioning his ancestors and others who were forced into institutions and unpaid work. The video and transcript of his address is available on The Ethics Centre's website and YouTube. The debate itself was a finalist in the United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Awards for "its role in stimulating public awareness and understanding".
Media commentator and author Mike Carlton described Grant's speech as Australia's “Martin Luther King moment”. The video of his address, posted on Facebook, went viral, and his name trended on Twitter the next day.

2017–present

In 2017, Grant joined the ABC as editor of Indigenous Affairs and fill-in host of nightly current affairs programme 7.30. Grant also hosted The Link, which aired on Friday nights.
In 2018 Grant started hosting a flagship national night current affairs programme, Matter of Fact, on the ABC News TV Channel and ABC News Radio. He was also appointed chief Asia correspondent for the ABC News Network. The program was cancelled after 10 months, ending on 29 November 2018, after which time he took up the new role of Indigenous and International Affairs Analyst with the ABC, and became Professor of Global Affairs at Griffith University.
In 2019 Grant moved to Doha, capital city of Qatar, to start work with Al Jazeera English.
In February 2020 he wrote an article commenting on High Court's ruling in the Love v Commonwealth, which determined that two men could not be deported as aliens, although not Australian citizens, because of their Aboriginal identity. In it, he writes "The judges' opinions make fascinating and inspiring reading. They are profound, wise, and sensitive", that they wrote their judgments "with nuance", and had "widened the horizon on what it is to be Indigenous and belong to this land".
In April 2020 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor's Chair of Australian-Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University.

Books

Grant has authored four works of non-fiction, which have been well received.

Film

Grant wrote, and features in, the full-length documentary film The Australian Dream, released in 2019, the title of which echoes that of his address at the IQ2 debate, which went viral in 2015.
The film looks at the part played by racism in the demonising of Australian Rules football-player Adam Goodes, and won the AACTA Award for best feature documentary in the 2019 series.

Politics

During early 2016 Grant was talked about as running in the 2016 Australian election. Grant ruled out running for the National Party of Australia and said he was not "ideologically bound to the left" and that he admired people with the "small 'l' Liberal approach".
In mid-March, 9 weeks before the 2019 Australian election, Grant was asked by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison to a meeting at Kirribilli House. While there he was asked to run for the Liberal Party of Australia, but turned down the offer, saying "It was an honour to be asked by the Prime Minister, but in the end that role is just not for me. I like what I am doing now, totally independently, and I don’t have to make my views fit within a party framework."

Current roles

, Grant is the ABC's Indigenous and International Affairs Analyst, Professor of Global Affairs at Griffith University, Principal Presenter with Al Jazeera English, and ambassador of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation .

Works

Print

In 2002, Grant published a memoir, The Tears of Strangers, which details the political and social changes of Indigenous Australians over the period of 40 years, focusing particularly on generations of the Wiradjuri people.
Grant's second book, Talking To My Country, was published in February 2016. The origins of the book came from the abuse of Adam Goodes in 2015. In a review for The Saturday Paper, Talking To My Country was described as "Australia viewed from the riverbank on the edge of town; great affection mixed with discomfort about, 'Advance Australia Fair'".
In 2019 Grant published his third book, Australia Day, a follow-up to Talking To My Country about what it means to be Australian. It received favourable reviews.
On Identity was published in both English and Wiradjuri in 2019, in hardcopy and as an e-book. In it he "asks why when it comes to identity he is asked to choose between black and white", and "argues that it is time to leave identity behind and to embrace cosmopolitanism". The book was well received.
Tell it to the World: An Indigenous Memoir was published in the US in 2019.

Film

, Grant has won the following awards:
Grant was married to Karla Grant with whom he had three children. A well publicised marriage break-up in 2000, prior to the Sydney Olympic Games, resulted from his starting a relationship with fellow TV personality Tracey Holmes. After criticism from News Corporation tabloids, while News Corporation was involved in the C7 Sport dispute with Seven, his employment at the Seven Network was terminated as a result, and he and Holmes moved to Hong Kong.