Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran now openly admits the network where he spent nearly 28 years is a liberal institution, telling a podcast host that "nobody" in the newsroom had voted for President Trump.
Moran made the admission Friday on "The Fifth Column" podcast, answering a direct question from co-host Michael C. Moynihan. Asked plainly whether ABC News is a liberal institution, Moran said yes, and attributed the problem to a newsroom that lacked a single Trump voter.
The concession lands months after ABC News cut Moran loose. The network declined to renew his contract in June after he published a since-deleted social media post calling Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller "world-class haters." ABC called the post "a clear violation of ABC News policies" and said it would not renew his deal. Moran had worked at the network for nearly 28 years.
On the podcast, Moran tried to thread a needle. He acknowledged the liberal tilt but insisted his own work met a high standard. Fox News Digital reported his full exchange with Moynihan, in which Moran laid out the bias in concrete terms:
"Yes. But I think, I think like a lot of mainstream media, it's because of lack of viewpoint diversity. That was one of the problems in covering Trump. Nobody had voted for him."
He then pivoted to self-defense, claiming he had pushed back internally against the groupthink he now describes:
"I sent out these 'Hey, we should be fair to Trump' internal emails. I heard from people, engineers, maybe the occasional producer, who said 'Thank you.'"
That detail is telling. The people who thanked Moran for urging fairness were engineers and the occasional producer, not the reporters, anchors, or editors who shape what millions of viewers see every night. Moran also declared that "there is no such thing as objectivity in journalism," then added, "I'd put the work I did at ABC News out there as excruciatingly fair."
But that self-assessment clashes with the record that ended his career at the network. Less than six weeks before his departure, Moran conducted a combative Oval Office interview with Trump marking the president's first 100 days back in office. During the sit-down, Trump rebuked him directly:
"I don't trust you. I don't trust a lot of people. I don't trust you. Look at you. You're so happy to do the interview, and then you start hitting me with these fake questions."
Weeks later, Moran posted the social media tirade that got him fired.
The deleted post surfaced at a volatile moment. National Review reported that screenshots of Moran's anti-Miller tirade spread rapidly during anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles. ABC suspended Moran on a Sunday and let him go shortly after. Vice President JD Vance publicly condemned the post, calling it "absolutely vile" and warning viewers to keep it in mind when watching ABC's Trump coverage.
Miller himself responded. "The most important fact about Terry's full public meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America," Miller said. "For decades, the privileged anchors and reporters narrating and gatekeeping our society have been radicals adopting a journalist's pose. Terry pulled off his mask."
An unnamed ABC News staffer, speaking to Fox News Digital after Moran's departure, expressed a different view, sympathetic but resigned:
"It's just sad honestly. It's sad for him, a long-time colleague, friend, a good person, family man... It's just unfortunate, but there was no alternative, especially in these times."
That same staffer made clear the network acted fast, telling Fox News Digital, "We f***ing took it seriously and dealt with it pretty g**d*** quickly."
Moran has not retreated into silence. After leaving ABC, he acknowledged the network's bias in a Substack post, writing that "the old news divisions don't hear many of the voices of the country, because those voices aren't in the newsroom." He framed the problem as almost accidental, "almost inadvertently," he wrote, rather than deliberate.
But his post-firing media appearances suggest the candor has limits. On another podcast, Moran called Trump "the most dominant figure of our age around the world" and "the man that we were warned about by the Founders, that democracies fall when a man who can captivate the populace wants to exercise the power that's there in the government." The Washington Examiner noted the Media Research Center rated his continued rhetoric four out of five "screams" for liberal media bias.
David Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, rejected Moran's attempt to position himself as a truth-teller after the fact. He told Fox News Digital that Moran's track record, which Bozell said included referring to Trump as a "Fuhrer", made the late-breaking honesty hard to credit:
"Now he admits the newsroom has zero pro-MAGA journalists and lives in a media bubble. Spare us the newfound candor. Moran was not an innocent observer of the bias he now acknowledges. He was one of its most enthusiastic practitioners."
ABC News, for its part, issued a boilerplate defense when it parted ways with Moran. "We hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism," the network's spokesperson said, adding that ABC "remain[s] committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism."
That statement now sits alongside Moran's own admission that nobody in the building voted for the president they were covering. ABC did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for further comment on Moran's podcast remarks.
The gap between ABC's official posture and the reality Moran describes is not subtle. A newsroom where zero staffers voted for the sitting president is not a newsroom wrestling with a mild diversity shortfall. It is a monoculture, one that spent years covering the most consequential political figure in a generation without a single internal voice that understood why 77 million Americans voted for him.
Moran now says he tried to fix it from the inside with emails urging fairness. The only people who thanked him were the engineers. That tells you everything ABC's spokesperson left out.