ABC Fires Terry Moran on White House Command

Terry Moran’s 28-year career at ABC News ended this week with a lesson in how quickly a major news organization will bend to political pressure. The veteran correspondent was fired for calling Stephen Miller a “world-class hater” in a late-night tweet. But the real story isn’t about what Moran posted. It’s about how fast ABC acted once the White House told them to.

Here’s what happened, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter: Moran posted his since-deleted tweet early Sunday morning, criticizing both President Trump and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, with Moran writing that Miller is “richly endowed with the capacity for hatred” and that “his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment.”

Look, maybe Moran deserved to be suspended for this. Maybe he even deserved to be fired. The tweet was inflammatory and personal, crossing lines that many news organizations would consider—to put it lightly—problematic. Reasonable people can disagree about whether his comments were appropriate for a network correspondent.

But this looks really bad for ABC News for one reason: timing.