Next month marks 59 years since Four Corners was first broadcast on the ABC but Monday night marks a significant, if overdue, milestone.
Guest reporter Stan Grant, who examines what the Black Lives Matter movement means to Indigenous Australians, looks straight into the camera and says: “Four Corners has been on air for longer than I’ve been alive and I’m the first Indigenous person ever to have reported for it.”
I. CAN’T. BREATHE. Searing reportage from @StanGrantMOF Monday on #4corners pic.twitter.com/80t0Wce6Hp
— Sally Neighbour (@neighbour_s) July 11, 2020
“Turn on our television screens and the faces you see, still mostly white.”
In I Can’t Breathe, Grant takes the flagship investigative program in a very different, intensely personal, direction, revealing the racist slurs he endured as a black kid growing up in white Australia, and talking to other Indigenous Australians about the impact of George Floyd’s murder here.
Grant shares some formative moments that still hurt him today. After telling the class about his family background a school friend asked him: “Why do you have to always talk about that Abo shit?” He talks about a family member who was removed from her parents and interviews his own mother and father about their painful history.
“This is my mother and my father,” he says. “This is all of my family who have come before me. This is my children who will live in a world that we did not make, but a world that they have to survive, and I have to teach them how to survive this world.”
Four Corners is not the only ABC program which has had to face up to its lack of diversity. Last month Insiders was criticised for inviting an all-white panel of political journalists to analyse the Black Lives Matter protests.
The burden shouldn’t be left to our Indigenous colleagues. All @abcnews reporters need to start speaking up and calling for greater change. And we need our EPs & management to try harder @sclark_melbs @TheLyonsDen @gavmorris https://t.co/hqgSLs4pdN
— Sophie McNeill (@Sophiemcneill) June 7, 2020
The next week its host, David Speers, confronted the issue and promised to do better. “We received plenty of valid criticism for failing to include an Indigenous journalist on last week’s show as we discussed the Black Lives Matter movement. Insiders does need to do better at bringing more diverse insights into the political debate and it’s something we’re committed to doing.”
"It is not good enough anymore particularly at this moment, but I would say any week, to have a panel of white people speaking about issues when there is very little lived experience of discrimination and racism on that panel," says @bridgeyb. #insiders #auspol pic.twitter.com/l98s5kRO0f
— Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) June 13, 2020
Grant says Floyd’s murder captured on video became every person enslaved and is highly relevant to Australians; Floyd was “every nameless faceless person who was told their lives did not matter”.
“This is not something we import from America – it is a struggle we share with black America,” he says.
“This is not a story for me, it is my life. I don’t get to turn away from this. To not care is not an option because I live in a world where race and racism can suffocate us.
“People always say to us, ‘Why are you so angry? Why are you so bitter?’ If they knew what our people had been through, they might just ask why we are not more angry. Why we are not more bitter.”
Grant also speaks to the US civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson and other community leaders. “We will keep our hopes alive,” Jackson says. “We will not surrender our hope. We will not surrender our hope. We will keep hope alive.”
• I Can’t Breathe goes to air on Monday 13 July at 8.30pm and will be available on ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners
