A veteran journalist who spent nearly three decades at ABC News now admits the network operates as a liberal institution where not a single colleague supported Donald Trump, a confession that landed only after the network cut him loose.
Terry Moran, the former ABC News senior national correspondent, told "The Fifth Column" podcast that the network's liberal tilt stems from a complete absence of ideological diversity in its newsroom. Asked point-blank by co-host Michael C. Moynihan whether ABC News is a liberal institution, Moran did not hedge.
Fox News Digital reported Moran's response:
"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."
That admission carries weight. Moran was not some junior staffer griping on his way out the door. He worked at ABC News for almost 28 years, serving as a senior national correspondent. And the claim was not limited to one network. Moran framed the problem as endemic across legacy media, newsrooms that look and think alike, staffed by people who share the same political assumptions and cannot hear the half of the country that disagrees.
Moran said he pushed back internally during the Trump years, circulating emails urging colleagues to cover the administration fairly. The response tells you everything about the culture he described.
"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.'"
Not anchors. Not senior producers. Not bureau chiefs. Engineers and the occasional producer. The people with the least editorial power were the ones who appreciated the call for fairness. The people who shaped coverage, by Moran's own account, did not.
In a separate Substack post published after his departure, Moran went further. He wrote that ABC News suffers from the same problem as "many leading cultural institutions" in America, a lack of viewpoint diversity that produces what he called "a kind of deafness."
"The old news divisions don't hear many of the voices of the country, because those voices aren't in the newsroom."
That is not a right-wing critic lobbing accusations from the outside. That is a man who spent his career inside one of the three legacy broadcast networks describing, in his own words, an institution that cannot hear half of its own audience.
Moran's departure from ABC News came in June 2025, after he published a since-deleted social media post describing President Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as "world-class haters." ABC declined to renew his expiring contract, citing the post as grounds for termination.
An ABC News spokesperson framed the decision in corporate language:
"We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran and based on his recent post, which was a clear violation of ABC News policies, we have made the decision to not renew."
The spokesperson added that ABC News holds "all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism" and remains "committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism."
Set that claim beside Moran's own testimony. The network says it enforces objectivity. Its own longtime correspondent says nobody in the building voted for the sitting president of the United States. Both statements cannot be true at the same time.
An unnamed ABC News staffer who spoke to Fox News Digital after Moran's exit expressed sympathy but not disagreement with the decision. The staffer called Moran "a long-time colleague, friend, a good person, family man" and said the outcome was "just sad honestly." But the staffer added that "there was no alternative, especially in these times."
Another unnamed staffer was blunter about how fast the network acted, telling Fox News Digital: "We f---ing took it seriously and dealt with it pretty g--d--- quickly."
The social media post was the final straw, but tensions between Moran and the administration had been building. Less than six weeks before his departure, Moran sat across from President Trump in the Oval Office for an interview marking the president's first 100 days back in office. The exchange turned combative, with Trump questioning Moran's motives 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."
Moran later posted the social media attack on Miller during what National Review described as anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles. Moran called Miller "a world-class hater" and wrote that "he eats his hate." The post was deleted, but not before it drew sharp responses from the administration.
Miller responded publicly, framing Moran's outburst as a window into the broader media culture:
"The most important fact about Terry's full public meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America. 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."
Vice President JD Vance echoed the point, writing that Moran's post was "dripping with hatred" and urging Americans to "remember that every time you watch ABC's coverage of the Trump administration."
Media Research President David Bozell offered a sharper critique, arguing that Moran's newfound candor about bias does not erase his own record.
"Terry Moran spent years proving ABC News is a liberal institution, including smearing Trump as a 'Fuhrer.' 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."
Bozell's point lands squarely. Moran now describes the problem with clinical detachment, a lack of viewpoint diversity, a kind of institutional deafness. But by his own account, he spent years inside that institution, and his most public act before leaving was a social media attack on a Trump adviser so inflammatory that even ABC could not defend it.
On the podcast, Moran made a broader philosophical claim about journalism: "There is no such thing as objectivity in journalism." He followed that with a defense of his own career: "I'd put the work I did at ABC News out there as excruciatingly fair."
Those two statements sit uneasily together. If objectivity does not exist, the standard for "fair" becomes whatever the journalist decides it is. And if the journalist works inside a newsroom where nobody voted for the president, that standard will tilt in one direction without anyone inside the building noticing, or caring.
Moran had made a "similar acknowledgment" about the scarcity of Trump supporters at ABC shortly after leaving the network, Fox News Digital noted. The podcast appearance expanded on that earlier admission with more detail and sharper language. Fox News Digital reached out to ABC News for further comment but did not immediately receive a response.
None of this will surprise conservative Americans who stopped trusting network news years ago. But Moran's admission matters because it comes from someone who cannot be dismissed as an outsider with an agenda. He was inside the building. He saw the emails go unanswered. He watched a newsroom full of people who all voted the same way cover a president they unanimously opposed, and he now concedes, on the record, that the coverage suffered for it.
When a 28-year veteran of a network admits that nobody in the newsroom voted for the president they were covering, the network's claim to objectivity is not a standard, it is a slogan. And slogans do not earn trust. Records do.