Bridget Brennan joins News Breakfast

Bridget Brennan will be joining News Breakfast from next Monday in the role of newsreader, a role vacated by Madeleine Morris.

She will also be co-hosting at least one day a week while Lisa Millar works on other projects for the ABC.

A Dja Dja Wurrung, Yorta Yorta woman, she will continue to do some reporting and analysis on Indigenous Affairs as well as mentoring First Nations journalists.

“I’m so thrilled to be joining the stellar, hard-working team at Brekky,” says Bridget. “ABC News Breakfast has been a key part of my morning for years and the team – behind and in front of the camera – does a phenomenal job bringing important stories to Australians.

“I’m also really excited to be joining a program that has made a commitment to elevating the voices and stories of First Nations communities.

“I consulted with my ABC Indigenous colleagues before taking the role and they felt it was important for our young people to see Aboriginal women on our screens.

“There are so many black trailblazers in the ABC who have stepped into important presenting and reporting roles and I’m proud to be following in their footsteps.”

ABC Director, News Justin Stevens said, “I first worked with Bridget at Four Corners a number of years ago and it was clear then she is an incredibly talented journalist. She will be a fantastic addition to this flagship program.”

News Breakfast, also with Michael Rowland and Tony Armstrong, has an average national daily audience of around 250,000 viewers.

Bridget joined the ABC as a cadet journalist in Darwin in 2010. After a stint with CNN in Hong Kong she returned to the ABC in 2014 as a reporter for national radio current affairs programs AM, The World Today and PM.

She has also worked on Background Briefing and for Four Corners as a researcher and in 2016 was awarded the Andrew Olle Scholarship.

Bridget was appointed National Indigenous Affairs Correspondent before becoming the ABC’s Europe Correspondent, based in London. After returning to Australia she was most recently Indigenous Affairs Editor.

She has been an Our Watch fellow and recently a fellow with Reuters Institute for Journalism in Oxford, where she researched the global pressures facing First Nations reporters.

This year the team of Bridget, Brooke Fryer, Suzanne Dredge and Stephanie Zillman won the Melbourne Press Club Gold Quill for their Four Corners report “How Many More?”, which was also nominated for a Logie and is a finalist in this year’s Walkley Awards.