‘A deafness’: Fired ABC anchor Terry Moran says media biased against Trump

A longtime ABC News reporter and anchor is calling out his former network, and the traditional media at large, for failing to represent a wide range of political views, especially when it comes to President Donald Trump. Terry Moran, who spent nearly three decades at ABC News before being let go earlier this summer, said the coverage of Trump has been clouded by ideological blind spots. 

“Were we biased? Yes,” Moran admitted in a recent Substack post. “Almost inadvertently, I’d say.”

‘Lack of viewpoint diversity’

Moran says while he’s proud of the work he and his colleagues did during his 28-year career, there was one glaring issue that persisted: “ABC News has the same problem so many leading cultural institutions do in America: A lack of viewpoint diversity.”

Since joining the network in 1997, Moran said he saw more diversity in race, gender and background in the newsroom. But when it came to ideology, particularly conservative or pro-Trump perspectives, those views were missing. 

“The old news divisions don’t hear many of the voices of the country, because those voices aren’t in the newsroom,” he wrote. “That’s bound to impact coverage,” adding that this creates “a kind of deafness.”

Moran criticized the way networks cover Trump voters, often sending reporters to rallies to collect soundbites from the crowd. 

“To me that often comes off as weirdly anthropological and inaccurate, kind of like trying to understand nature by visiting a zoo,” Moran wrote. “You don’t really see a tiger at the zoo, just a version of a tiger.”

Moran’s firing

Moran made headlines in April after scoring a one-on-one interview with Trump. The interview marked a high-profile moment for Moran, one that came just weeks before controversy would follow.

In June, Moran took to social media to criticize Trump and his White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in a since-deleted post on X, calling them both “world-class haters.” ABC News swiftly fired him, citing a violation of company policy regarding impartiality.

But even now, Moran is standing by what he wrote.

“I don’t take back or regret a syllable of the post I wrote about Stephen Miller and Donald Trump that got me fired by ABC,” he said.

Opposition to media merger 

While urging greater ideological diversity in journalism, Moran also took a sharp turn in criticizing the Trump administration’s role in approving the Paramount-Skydance merger. The deal had been stalled for over a year before federal regulators gave it the green light — after Skydance agreed to install an ombudsman to monitor potential bias at CBS News. But the approval didn’t sit well with Moran. Referencing FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who pushed the deal through, Moran wrote, “Brendan Carr can go to hell.” 

The veteran reporter now publishes independently on Substack. His latest post offers a candid look inside legacy media and why he believes some Americans feel misrepresented by it.