Acclaimed journalist Stan Grant has spoken ahead of the referendum saying there needs to be a 'reckoning' in the media. He has criticised the media's role in the debate around the Voice to Parliament, saying it has trivialised the issue. Our reporter Isabella Tollhurst sat down with Stan ahead of his Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture at Charles Darwin University in his first interview since he left the ABC earlier this year.
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00:00 A year ago, or 18 months ago probably more like, you were standing at Gama when Anthony
00:06 Albanese announced the voice would be, the referendum would be going ahead.
00:11 Now 18 months later, how have you changed and how has the debate changed in your eyes?
00:18 Sadly I think my worst fears have been realised in that these things are too big for the media.
00:27 I don't think we can squeeze in the fragility of 200 years of this history into a newspaper
00:34 headline or a television news grab or a radio interview or a debate.
00:41 These things are too much for our media and our politics and so we trivialise and we distort
00:49 and we platform rhetoric and we shout but we don't really speak.
00:56 The animosity of the debate has increased over the past year, two years.
01:03 Do you think the media are to blame for that?
01:05 I don't think the animosity has increased, I think the media has just given it a voice.
01:11 Some of the ludicrous stories that have been platformed, some of the hateful things that
01:16 have been platformed, racism platformed.
01:19 And I think personally, I think there needs to be a reckoning in media around the destructive
01:26 tendencies and instincts of what passes for media coverage and the need for a more constructive
01:31 approach to actually start with what we agree upon rather than what we disagree upon.
01:37 We're in the Northern Territory so it would be remiss of me not to ask a Northern Territory
01:42 centred question.
01:43 One in four people here are Indigenous and they're a population of people who would likely
01:49 largely be affected by the outcome of this referendum, whichever way it goes.
01:55 Is that something that voters in the Territory should be keeping in mind?
02:00 I think it means a lot to all of us.
02:02 I think the voice is something that cuts across so many things in our country.
02:08 There is the reality of the failure of policy to achieve the outcomes that First Nations
02:16 people so desperately need.
02:18 And I think you would hope with representation that allows a stronger input from Aboriginal
02:25 communities through an enshrined voice brings about those sort of policy outcomes that people
02:31 so desperately need.
02:33 These things that are much bigger than what we will vote on one particular day because
02:39 we'll have to wake up the next day and ask ourselves again, who are we?
02:44 What does it mean to be Australian?
02:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]