Former ABC correspondent Terry Moran, suspended and fired for calling White House aide Stephen Miller a “world-class hater,” among other things, insists that his deranged opinion about Miller is “accurate,” and that he didn’t give up his “citizenship” when he became a journalist.
Moran uttered the absurdity in an interview with the Bulwark, a website created by hate-Trump neoconservatives who have returned to the Democratic Party from whence they came.
Odd thing is, at one time, far-left journalists believed they did, figuratively speaking, give up citizenship when they entered the profession. Or so said two of the most famous newsmen in the last half of the 20th century, ABC’s Peter Jennings and CBS’s Mike Wallace. During an ethics forum, both said — such was their commitment to “objectivity” — they would permit American GIs to be ambushed to get a good story.
But on both counts, the journalists inadvertently disclose “why Americans hate the media,” as James Fallows titled his decades-old Atlantic offering about the Jennings-Wallace broadcast.
Moran said he wasn’t drunk when he attacked Miller in a late night post while watching Ocean’s Eleven with his family, he told The New York Times.
The thought occurred to him, and he just had to say it. “I was thinking about our country, and what’s happening, and just turning it over in my mind,” he told the newspaper. “I wrote it, and I said, ‘That’s true.’”
If it were true, one wonders why he deleted it, but anyway, Moran’s evaluation of Miller was unsparing.
“The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism,” Moran began:
Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpism movement and translates them into policy. But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller. It’s not brains. It’s bile.
Moran claimed that Miller’s physiognomy exudes hatred, then brought President Trump into the post:
Miller is a man who’s richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater.
You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.
Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred [is] only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.
ABC suspended Moran, then fired him a day later on June 10 by not renewing his contract.
“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 network said:
At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.
Speaking with the hate-Trump Bulwark, whose worthies undoubtedly agree that Miller and Trump are “world-class haters,” Moran explained that being a journalist doesn’t mean giving up one’s citizenship.
“You don’t sacrifice your citizenship as a journalist, and your job is not to be objective,” Moran said:
There is no Mount Olympus of objectivity where a Mandarin class of wise people have no feelings about their society. We’re all in this together. What you have to be is fair and accurate. And I would refer to the interview with the president that I did, or a lot of my work, and I would also say that while very hot, this is an observation, a description that was accurate and true.
Unless he’s clairvoyant, how Moran determined that Miller “hates” anyone is unclear.
But that aside, there was a time when far-left journalists would have disagreed with Moran. A journalist, they argued, did indeed give up citizenship, figuratively speaking. Or, at least, citizenship mattered not.
During a series called Ethics in America on public television in 1987, an episode titled Under Fire examined the dilemmas soldiers faced in war. That war was between fictional North and South Kosan, with the United States backing the South.
During the second half of the episode, moderator Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor, asked ABC’s Jennings whether he would, if embedded with a North Kosanese unit, warn an unsuspecting patrol of Americans about an ambush. Jennings said he would not simply let his cameraman “roll tape.” He would warn the Americans. Even though he would be killed, Jennings said, “I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act.”
CBS’s Wallace answered differently:
I think some other reporters would have a different reaction. They would regard it simply as another story they were there to cover.
Then he thrashed Jennings. “You’re a reporter,” he said. “Granted, you’re an American. I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story.”
Worse still, Wallace told Oglethree that he didn’t have “higher duty” to prevent American casualties.
Replied Wallace:
No. You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!
Sadly, Jennings changed his mind. “I chickened out,” he said.
Separated by almost 40 years, juxtaposing the two stories reveals how much things have changed. Journalists were so “objective” back then they didn’t consider themselves citizens. Now, if we are to believe Moran, they needn’t be impartial because they, too, are citizens whose only duty is to be “fair and accurate.”
In either case, Jennings and Wallace in 1987 and Moran in 2025 prove that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Journalists are as far-left now, if not further, as they were then. And Americans despise them as much now as they did then. Or maybe more.