changing default text colour in indesign

Whenever I start a new document and create a text box, the colour of the text I type in defaults to a gradient white to black. This is very frustrrating... I cannot work out how to change that default colour. When working in tables, I can set a text box text colour to black but once I insert a table, the text in the table defaults to the gradient colour. I have never seen this before and have been using InDesign for years! Hoping someone here can help!

Cally