Since receiving death threats and racist abuse following his comments around the King’s Coronation in 2023, author and journalist Stan Grant has spoken openly on the shortcomings of the media industry, as well as the damage that constant negative news coverage causes to individuals and communities.
Whilst Grant has largely kept out of the public eye since 2023, leaving the ABC to focus on writing and other projects, he did speak at an intimate event in Sydney, hosted by Work Club Global and Claxton Speakers, last night following the publication of his new book – Murriyang.
Interweaved with memories of his father, Murriyang is both softer and more poetic than Grant’s previous works. A response to the Voice referendum, it is a book focused on love, forgiveness, and leaving the past in the past for the sake of a better future.
Grant himself seemed to embody the ethos of his new book, appearing notably happier, healthier and refreshed compared to his appearance at Cairns Crocodiles two years ago.
Whilst Grant expressed a clear desire to leave his 40-year career in media behind him – when an audience member asked how the media could be better, he joked that it could be better ‘switched off’ – he was not afraid to reflect on his broadcaster past.
“We are in the business of suffering,” he said of the media before adding that he had been addicted to that suffering.
“What I found being a journalist reporting from war zones was that I was addicted to suffering; suffering was where I found meaning.”
This focus on catastrophe is as the base of media and news reporting, he said: “Everything must be catastrophe because I was living in a world of endless catastrophe. And that’s the media. We are conditioned to believe that the world is an endless catastrophe, and that is not how the world it. That’s not normal. It’s not how we live. Even in the worst of the world’s warzones, people are still not animals.”
Working in warzones and witnessing the awful things that humans do to each other, stripped away bits of his soul, Grant said. Further parts of his soul were stripped away once he returned to Australia and witnessed the suffering of indigenous people here, he added.
“Coming back to Australia and seeing that my people are still the the most impoverished and imprisoned people in Australia, stripped away bits of my soul. And going through the voice referendum, seeing my family go through that orchestrated campaign of abuse and violence stripped parts of my soul away. But Murriyang gave me back my soul”.
Since leaving the media, Grant said he has discovered that life’s true meaning is to be found in the small things.
“It is the small things that allow us to find our humanity,” he said to the audience.
“We live in the small things. So I’ve walked away from the big things. I have no desire for that, and I have no desire to be back in the world. I want to ask different questions. If we keep living in the media, we miss the beauty of the world.”
Grant was a keynote speaker at 2023’s Cairns Crocodiles. Despite being slated to attend in person, he had to deliver his keynote to delegates via video link due to fears for his safety. That didn’t stop him from gaining a standing ovation from the audience after he spoke passionately about the damage that an addictive, catastrophe-drive news cycle does to humanity.
You can read and watch his keynote here: Stan Grant: “We Are Feeding Hate Into The Bloodstream Of Our Society”
