A former ABC News reporter who left the network after criticizing a senior-level White House official has accused the Disney-owned network of exhibiting “inadvertent” political bias.
In a post published last week on his Substack newsletter, ex-ABC correspondent Terry Moran said the broadcaster’s news division was shaped by limited perspective on account of a lack of political and social ideology among its mostly-progressive employees.
“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.”
Moran argued that ABC News, along with other “corporate/legacy/mainstream” news outlets, employs few journalists who supported former President Donald Trump — a reality that, he contends, inevitably influences editorial judgment and coverage priorities.
“This is bound to impact coverage, not so much out of malevolent bias (that’s the cartoon version peddled by Trump, Brendan Carr and online MAGA), but more out of what is a kind of deafness,” he said, referencing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr and Trump-aligned online commentators.
His comments come at a particularly volatile time when Trump and members of his administration — including Carr, whom Trump hand-picked to lead the FCC before he took office in January — have accused major media companies like Disney, Comcast’s NBC Universal and CBS parent Paramount Global of promoting unfair hiring practices and injecting bias in their news coverage, among other malfeasance.
Since rising as Chairman, Carr has sent letters to the top executives at Comcast and Disney, questioning their diversity goals in hiring and promotional practices, their news coverage and their affiliate relations between the networks they operate and the independent broadcasters that carry their programming.
Under Carr, the FCC also stonewalled on Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance Media until an unrelated legal matter filed by Trump last year was settled. Paramount agreed to close the legal matter by paying $16 million toward the build-out of Trump’s future presidential library. Separately, officials at Skydance committed to running public service announcements on Paramount-owned channels that favored conservative causes if the deal was approved. The FCC gave its blessing last month.
Moran’s remarks — which stopped short of endorsing Trump or Carr’s behavior — came several months after ABC News opted not to renew his contract once he criticized White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in a social media post. The post came amid upheaval in Southern California over immigration raids, which were orchestrated by Miller. In his comments, Moran called Miller a “world-class hater,” a remark that ABC News said violated its policy.
Despite the fallout, Moran stood by his remarks. “I don’t take back or regret a syllable,” he wrote Tuesday, noting he had been regarded internally as someone who tried to foster greater empathy toward conservative perspectives.
“I actually had a workplace reputation of trying to help coworkers to see the other side, to walk a mile in the shoes of MAGA, to acknowledge the democratic forces that have made Donald Trump the dominant political figure of our time,” he added.
“So, yes, from my perspective, the old news networks are biased.”
