Former ABC News reporter Terry Moran on Thursday said network news and legacy media companies are “failing the American people,” bowing to “corporate pressure” amid President Donald Trump’s second term.
“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,” said Moran on an episode of the “In Good Faith with Philip DeFranco” podcast.
Moran — whose “world-class haters” post on Trump and senior White House aide Stephen Miller led to his ABC News ouster in June — argued that there’s “frustration” among those in network news and, despite changes in tone during segments, correspondents aren’t saying “the words of what’s happening.”
“That’s corporate pressure,” he stressed.
Following his exit from ABC News, Moran has launched a SubStack newsletter and gone on to defend his “accurate, fair and true description” of Miller, emphasizing that “cruelty is the point” with him.
On DeFranco’s podcast, Moran proceeded to turn his attention to the “multi-kabillion-dollar business” in ABC’s parent company Disney.
“ABC News is a little, little tiny speck in that giant empire,” he explained.
“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. I mean, there’s like absolutely no upside to that. So the pressure’s on, very much so.”
HuffPost has reached out to Disney and ABC for comment.
Moran’s recent comments arrive months after ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ remarks on the civil verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault suit against the president.
The settlement sparked criticism from legal experts and reportedly led to internal pushback at the network.
In May, Disney and ABC News were at the center of a report by The Daily Beast where sources claimed that executives asked the hosts of “The View” to tone down their political talk, a request the panel wasn’t feeling.