The wonderful thing about a good media campaign is that soon enough it becomes self-sustaining. Take a look at the most recent content merry-go-round at News Corp, which has has reached it’s logical conclusion: its target, Wiradjuri, Gurrawin and Dharawal man Stan Grant, has stood down, allowing some chin-stroking and reflection in the papers about how this happened, and what it all means.
With grace and remarkably little rancour, the veteran journalist signed off from his final show for ABC flagship Q+A last night. He spoke of love and hope, invoked the Wiradjuri concept of Yindyamarra — “It means that I am not just responsible for what I do, but for what you do” — to express sorrow at whatever he must have done to inspire the level of hatred he’s recently received, and said the mainstream media “must ask if we are truly honouring a world worth living in”.
The News Corp tabloids have given the speech appropriately reverent coverage. A “powerful statement”, said the Herald Sun, while The Daily Telegraph reflected on what it saw as an “impassioned, sincere message to both his supporters and critics, reflecting on his Indigenous culture and the racist abuse that drove him off the air”. The primary framing from this section of the media has emphasised the role of “online racist abuse” in Grant’s decision to step away from the media. And well it might.
This, after all, would be the same Daily Tele that greeted Grant’s initial announcement that he was stepping away by calling on one-woman defamation lawyer support fund Annette Sharp, to remind everyone that in the ’90s Grant changed jobs a few times, had an affair, and that colleagues had said he was “vulnerable” to criticism. Her piece concluded: “At last his grievances have found a captive audience in an era of unquestioning modern wokeism when a good celebrity bellyache can generate enough clicks to make you believe you’re relevant again.”
The Hun, likewise was happy to republish carnival barker James Morrow’s response on Sky News’ Outsiders (speaking of irrelevance): “I’m very sorry if you feel like your feelings have been hurt over the things people said, but it is not all about you.”
Meanwhile, The Australian‘s coverage noted that Grant had “expressed his ‘disappointment’ in the lack of support offered to him by his employer after the public broadcaster received intense criticism for its coverage of King Charles III’s coronation earlier this month”. Intense criticism, the paper failed to mention, that was almost completely led by the Oz.
After Grant’s appearance on a panel before the coronation, which had the temerity to discuss the impact colonialism in the name of the British Crown had had on Australia’s Indigenous peoples, there was a sustained conservative media campaign, which racked up more than 150 mentions of the ABC’s coronation coverage in the pages of The Australian and on Sky News alone.
And having explicitly rejected Noel Pearson’s recent characterisation of its readers as “borderline casual racists”, the Oz, for no reason at all we’re sure, disabled comments on coverage of Grant’s sign-off.
