Jan Fran

T he teacher said, ‘Let’s go round the room and everyone can tell us what they watched last night,’” Jan Fran told the Shameless podcast, recalling a moment from her school days. While her classmates mentioned popular sitcoms and soap operas, Fran had a very different answer. “‘The news.

’ I think the class just went completely silent. Even my friend, who was sitting next to me, turned and mouthed ‘ the news? You watched the news ?’” Now an accomplished journalist, media commentator and broadcaster, it was this sense of curiosity and engagement with social issues from a young age that set the foundation for Fran to pursue a passion for journalism and storytelling. “I was also aware of how powerful the media is,” Fran tells WellBeing .



“How powerful it is in shaping stories, and shaping perceptions of people, and how wrong it can be, especially when you grow up in a community where the media representation of you does not match your lived experience within that community at all. I was very conscious of these things, and it kind of felt like [journalism] was the direction that I was always going to head.” Fran has filmed documentaries around the world and created her own award-winning online opinion and analysis series to help engage young people in current affairs.

She’s also co-host of the ABC’s Question Everything and is known for her work on SBS’s The Feed and Channel 10’s The Project . But alongside her journalistic accomplishments, Fran .