Former correspondent admits ABC News was biased against Trump

Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran.

A former longtime ABC News correspondent said the network is a "liberal institution" and displayed an apparent bias in its coverage of President Donald Trump during an interview on a podcast. 

Terry Moran, who was let go by ABC News last year after posting an anti-Trump screed on social media, now is saying his former network had a built-in bias toward Trump during an interview on The Fifth Column podcast. Moran was asked by Michael Moynihan, one of the co-hosts of the podcast, "Is ABC News a liberal institution?"

"Yes. But I think, like a lot of mainstream media, it's because of a lack of viewpoint diversity," Moran said. "That was one of the problems in covering Trump. Nobody had voted for him."

"I sent out these, 'Hey, we should be fair to Trump' internal emails," Moran claimed. "I heard from people — engineers, maybe the occasional producer — who said 'Thank you. Atta boy.'" Moran appears to be doing some sort of damage control a year after his unceremonious dismissal from mainstream media. 

Moran, who was at the end of his contract when he unleashed the late-night tirade last year, faced questions that he may have been drunk at the time that he posted it. "It wasn't a drunk tweet," Moran said in the immediate aftermath of the controversy. Not long after his departure from ABC News, Moran launched a newsletter that he sends frequently in which he discusses politics and other topics. 

Moran also discussed in the interview being stymied by ABC News when attempting to issue a report in 2021 on the COVID-19 virus possibly being the result of a lab leak in Wuhan. He said the report, which eventually aired on Nightline, had been edited beyond recognition and that he'd been told former NIAID director Anthony Fauci called for the changes to the story himself. "I did feel the heavy hand of censorship in my work at ABC News," Moran said.

In late 2024, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $15 million and a public apology over false remarks anchor George Stephanopoulos had made on air about Trump. Below, watch a clip of Moran's admission.