ABC News Is a Bubble, Not a Free-Speech Paragon

Tim Graham on Aug 19, 2026

The folks at Disney and ABC News are parading around, suing the Federal Communications Commission and boasting about how they are the paragons of freedom of speech and courageous reporting that President Donald Trump can't stand. What they're really celebrating is putting out a product that resides solidly inside a liberal bubble. They are the ones who cannot stand an opposing point of view.

Former ABC reporter Terry Moran recently went on the podcast "The Fifth Column," and host Michael Moynihan asked if ABC News was a liberal institution. Moran said, "Yes, but 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."

Moynihan had a follow-up question. Were you part of the liberal bubble? Moran replied: "I certainly worked in it for a long time." He claimed he was "excruciatingly fair" at ABC, which sounds like an echo inside a bubble. When no one in a newsroom has voted Republican, who checks them for liberal excesses and errors?

The bubble can be fierce. In the same podcast, Moran told a story of how ABC completely mangled a story he had reported in 2021 on the origins of the COVID pandemic in a Chinese lab. When the network completed his review of the story, he found the end product "incomprehensible." He was furious. Who did this to his story? "Lawyers" and the standards department, and "I was told, Fauci." Anthony Fauci was sent a copy of the transcript or video, Moran said, so he refused to watch the dramatically altered stories that aired on ABC.

Then he said he didn't support "demonizing" Fauci. The liberal bubble doesn't like that.

It sounds reminiscent of the leaked hot-mic video in 2019 where then-ABC reporter Amy Robach complained that her 2015 interview with Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre was blocked. ABC then rushed out to insist the story wasn't fully cooked, so it didn't meet their standards.

So we could certainly suggest that the imposters at Free Speech ABC squelch their own reporters when their reporting is found troublesome by people ABC likes (Fauci or the Clintons, for example), as opposed to their hate objects (Trump). There certainly is such a thing as "news judgment" and finding a story is "not ready." It's another to kill or mangle stories because someone powerful complained.

Perhaps ABC is suing the FCC to please the liberals who were unhappy that they settled with Trump after George Stephanopoulos recklessly claimed Trump was "found liable for rape" in the E. Jean Carroll case. Broadcasting Carroll's unsubstantiated allegations was strange coming from Stephanopoulos, whose old boss Bill Clinton was plausibly accused of raping Juanita Broaddrick. ABC News suppressed that story when it came out in 1999.

These liberals also treat Jimmy Kimmel as a free-speech hero after he lied about Charlie Kirk's murderer being a Trump supporter. It was ABC affiliates complaining about that vicious lie that caused Kimmel to be benched for four nights. It doesn't matter whether you lie, as long as you're taking the "right side" against an evil president.

The central irony of this whole struggle is that ABC doesn't believe in conservative speech. They want the FCC to leave them alone as they use the public airwaves to only broadcast one point of view -- one view on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," one view on "The View" and one view most of the time on the "news" programs.

A unanimous liberal bubble is in the public interest -- so say the people who claim to speak for Democracy.

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.