By Isabella Simonetti and Joe Flint
Executives at Disney's ABC News woke up Sunday morning to a social-media firestorm that put them in the Trump administration's crosshairs.
Two days later, they ousted a veteran correspondent.
Terry Moran, who worked at ABC since 1997, had posted a lengthy message on X just after midnight Sunday attacking a top Trump aide and the president himself. He called President Trump "a world-class hater" and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller "a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred."
The post further strained the network's relationship with Trump, months after it agreed to a $15 million settlement with him over a defamation lawsuit involving star anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Across multiple presidential administrations, Moran was known to email ABC News colleagues with his takes on White House policies or to lobby for greater scrutiny of political spin. Sometimes he made his views more public. "Anyone with eyes to see and a brain to think understood Trump would trash legal conservatives as soon as they got in his way," he recently wrote on X about Trump's criticism of the Federalist Society.
Mainstream media organizations often have guidelines encouraging news reporters to refrain from sharing their personal opinions about political topics on social media or in other forums, so as not to undermine trust with their audiences as straightforward sources of fact. The Trump administration has been quick to seize on missteps and signs of bias by members of the press, real or perceived.
Early on Sunday morning, ABC News's vice president and Washington bureau chief Rick Klein contacted Moran about his X post, according to a person familiar with the matter. Klein asked Moran to delete it, and he complied.
Klein then conferred with ABC News's legal and standards team as well as human resources and top executives including Debra OConnell, president of ABC News Group and Disney entertainment networks. A representative from the standards team, which oversees journalistic best practices, reached out with a new message for Moran: The correspondent was suspended from the network.
Meanwhile, John Santucci, an executive editorial producer at ABC News, fielded outreach from the Trump administration, including White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Leavitt had posted on X calling Moran's comments "unhinged and unacceptable" and said her team had inquired about "how they plan to hold Terry accountable."
Santucci often corresponds with Trump officials on behalf of the network, and had been involved in coordinating an interview with the president that Moran conducted in April.
ABC News issued a statement later on Sunday, saying that the network "does not condone subjective personal attacks on others." It also said that Moran's post "does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards."
Trump and his administration are locked in a number of legal battles with news organizations, including Paramount's CBS News over the editing of a "60 Minutes" interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Associated Press regarding its style guide for what Trump renamed the Gulf of America and the news outlet's access to presidential events. Trump has also regularly criticized NBC and MSNBC, and in April called Comcast and Brian Roberts, the company's chairman and chief executive, "a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!" on his Truth Social platform.
Moran had high-profile reporting clips, including the April interview with Trump, coverage of the Supreme Court and dispatches from the papal conclave. But his weekend post roiled some colleagues who felt he had made their jobs harder.
By Tuesday afternoon, network executives moved to oust Moran. His contract with ABC was set to expire on Friday, June 13, and executives opted not to renew it because of the post. They decided to dismiss him a few days before the contract was up.
Disney CEO Bob Iger and Dana Walden, the co-chair of Disney entertainment, were informed of the ABC decision and supported it, according to a person familiar with their thinking.
People familiar with the company's decision said it wasn't made in response to pressure from the Trump administration.
Moran didn't respond to requests for comment. In recent days he has rebranded himself on X as an "independent journalist," and his bio includes a link to a Substack page.
Write to Isabella Simonetti at isabella.simonetti@wsj.com and Joe Flint at Joe.Flint@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 12, 2025 12:38 ET (16:38 GMT)
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