Former ABC News reporter Terry Moran asserted that his former colleagues at the network are yielding to "corporate pressure" from parent company Disney to avoid critical coverage of President Donald Trump.
Moran, fired by the network in June for his rant against White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, made the comments Thursday in an interview on the "In Good Faith with Philip DeFranco" podcast.
"I think that the business that I was in for all those years — network news, corporate media, legacy media, whatever you want to call it — is failing the American people. And they have corporate pressure on them," Moran said. "And they have kind of rules of what they can say and what they can't say, what they can describe and what they can't describe. The facts in front of them are eluding their coverage. And I think that they are disserving the American people."
Moran said there's "frustration" among correspondents who are forced to show their outrage through "tone."
"Look, Disney, I mean, is a multi-kabillion-dollar business, right? ABC News is a little tiny speck in that giant empire. The last thing that the head of Disney or anybody in these corporate offices wants is a problem with the president of the United States because somebody in the news division tweeted something," he said.
Moran was fired by ABC after calling Miller a "world-class hater" on social media, a post he since deleted.
"It was something that was in my heart and mind. And I would say I used very strong language deliberately," Moran said in the aftermath.
Earlier this month, Moran admitted that reporters at ABC News — and other legacy media outlets — have a bias against Trump.
"Were we biased? Yes. Almost inadvertently, I'd say," Moran wrote. "ABC News has the same problem so many leading cultural institutions do in America: A lack of viewpoint diversity."
"It is no secret. There are hardly any people who supported Donald Trump at ABC News or the other corporate/legacy/mainstream news networks," he added. "And this is bound to impact coverage, not so much out of malevolent bias … but more out of what is a kind of deafness."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.