Ross Coulthart

Ross Coulthart is an Australian investigative journalist and a NewsNation Special Correspondent, best known in the UAP world for conducting the first television interview with intelligence whistleblower David Grusch in 2023. He has a long, award-winning mainstream career, but his UAP reporting is best understood as source-attributed claims, and it has drawn strong criticism from skeptics.

Who is Ross Coulthart?

Coulthart is a Gold Walkley Award–winning journalist (Australia's top journalism honor) with decades at outlets including the ABC's Four Corners, Nine Network's Sunday and 60 Minutes Australia, and Seven's Sunday Night. He is the author of In Plain Sight (2021), an investigation into UAP, and since late 2023 has reported for the U.S. network NewsNation.

What is Ross Coulthart's role in UAP disclosure?

His pivotal moment was the June 2023 first TV interview with David Grusch, who alleged a U.S. program to retrieve and reverse-engineer non-human craft. Since then Coulthart has reported a string of high-profile UAP stories for NewsNation, including the 2025 "Jake Barber" crash-retrieval claims and the "Skywatcher" summoned-UAP reporting. He has publicly stated his view that U.S. "disclosure has already begun" — an opinion, not an established fact.

Is Ross Coulthart credible?

His mainstream credentials are real and verifiable. The debate is over his UAP work: advocates value his access and persistence, while skeptics (including the Australian Skeptics, who gave him a critical "Bent Spoon" award in 2023) argue his UAP reporting is insufficiently critical. UAP Ledger treats his career as documented and the extraordinary claims he relays as attributed and unverified.

Does Ross Coulthart still host Need to Know?

No. Coulthart co-hosted the Need to Know podcast with Bryce Zabel from 2022, but he departed in July 2025 (his final episode was #65). Zabel has continued the show with historian Richard Dolan. Coulthart's current platform is NewsNation.