Ex-ABC News reporter admits employer biased against Trump due to lack of ‘viewpoint diversity'
Moran, who spent nearly 28 years at ABC News, was dropped by the outlet in June after attacking President Donald Trump and White House aide Stephen Miller on social media. He now offers his commentary on Substack and penned a look at the future of CBS News after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said incoming ownership would implement an ombudsman to "root out the bias" last week when approving a long-planned merger.
"Let's talk about bias. I worked at ABC News for almost 28 years, and I'm proud to say that," Moran wrote on his Substack on Tuesday. "But: Were we biased? Yes. Almost inadvertently, I'd say. ABC News has the same problem so many leading cultural institutions do in America: A lack of viewpoint diversity."
Moran explained that ABC News was run by "White men" when he joined the network, but the Disney-owned news organization made efforts to increase diversity to change the company "for the better."
"But there was one way ABC did not change and did not diversify. It is no secret. There are hardly any people who supported Donald Trump at ABC News," Moran wrote.
"And this is bound to impact coverage, not so much out of malevolent bias… but more out of what is a kind of deafness," Moran continued. "The old news divisions don't hear many of the voices of the country, because those voices aren't in the newsroom. Yes, news teams go out with a microphone and a camera and accost people at Trump rallies; but to me that often comes off as weirdly anthropological and inaccurate, kind of like trying to understand nature by visiting a zoo."
Moran added that it might "sound strange" coming from someone who was shown the door for an anti-Trump outburst, but he played devil's advocate to Trump critics inside ABC News.
"But inside the newsroom, I had a reputation of trying to get colleagues 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," Moran wrote. "So, yes, from my perspective, the old news networks are biased."
ABC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moran's firing came less than six weeks after he interviewed Trump as part of a major primetime special for ABC marking Trump's first 100 days in office. Trump repeatedly chided Moran for his various lines of questioning.
Moran was axed by ABC News in June, just before his contract with the network was set to expire, after he called Trump and Miller "world-class" haters.
"The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism," Moran began his post. "Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that's not what's interesting about Miller. It's not brains. It's bile."
"Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world-class hater," Moran wrote. "You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate."
Moran's post went on to also call Trump a "world-class hater" but added that "his hatred [is] only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification. That's his spiritual nourishment."
An ABC News staffer told Fox News Digital in June that Moran was beloved by his colleagues and insisted he wasn't some "psycho liberal" like the X post that resulted in his firing may have suggested.
Moran has said he doesn't regret the anti-Trump post on social media.
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