Longtime ABC News correspondent Terry Moran said Friday that the network and much of mainstream media suffer from a deep-seated progressive bias—a “bubble” of limited viewpoint diversity—that hampered coverage of Donald Trump’s second term.
Speaking on the Fifth Column podcast, the 66-year-old independent journalist answered “yes” when asked if ABC News is a liberal institution. He said the same applies to “a lot of mainstream media,” blaming a “lack of viewpoint diversity” in newsrooms for “problems in covering Trump.”
Moran’s remarks carry weight because he was no MAGA supporter. ABC fired him in June 2025 over a social media post that called President Trump and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller “full of hatred.”
He had previously served as the network’s chief White House correspondent.
“Nobody had voted for him,” Moran recalled of internal resistance to straight coverage. “And because I sent out these ‘Hey, we should be fair to Trump’ in internal emails, I heard from people—engineers, maybe the occasional producer—who said ‘Thank you. Atta boy.’”
Hosts Michael C. Moynihan and Matt Welch noted that the politics of behind-the-scenes staff often conflict with on-air talent. “A bubble,” Moran interjected with a smile. “The bubble is very real,” Moynihan agreed.
Moran also described the backlash from Trump supporters who felt “betrayed” by a reporter who had “covered it straight.” He argued that covering “Trump Two” honestly requires discussing “the threat that it represents, to the way we’ve governed ourselves all these years.”