The Morality Clause
Terry Moran should have known better.
Not because what he said was wrong. But because it was real.
And the great unspoken rule of today’s media institutions is this: reality, when it becomes politically inconvenient, must be disavowed.
Moran, a veteran correspondent at ABC News, called Trump aide Stephen Miller “a man richly endowed with the capacity for hatred.” A simple, piercing sentence. One that rang true to anyone who has followed Miller’s long career of cruelty and scapegoating.
But truth is no longer the standard. The standard is liability.
ABC, still reeling from a $16 million settlement with Trump, sprang into action. A tweet deleted within hours. A suspension. A contract not renewed. A sacrifice delivered in the name of “standards.”
We are meant to believe this was about professionalism. About preserving the integrity of journalism.
But it wasn’t.
It was about a cold political calculus.
Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, and Dana Walden, co-chair of Disney Entertainment and a possible successor, signed off on the firing. Their calculation was simple: protecting the business mattered more than protecting a reporter’s moral voice.
That voice was inconvenient. It complicated the company’s ongoing efforts to mollify Trump’s inner circle. It threatened to reopen wounds from the defamation case they had just paid to close.
In other words, it cost too much.
This is where we are.
A major American news organization, owned by one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world, now functions as a risk management firm first and a truth-seeking enterprise second.
Miller’s defenders called Moran’s post “unhinged.” The White House demanded accountability. ABC delivered it.
Not because they were forced to. The Journal reports that the firing wasn’t due to direct pressure. It didn’t have to be. The performance was already internalized.
One can picture the meeting: the executives nodding solemnly, invoking “trust” and “objectivity” and “balance.” All fine words, stripped of their moral core.
Because here is the deeper tension.
The Trump project is not a normal political movement. It is an organized attempt to erode the boundaries of truth and decency in public life. Stephen Miller is not a generic White House aide. He is an architect of some of the most openly xenophobic policies in modern American governance.
To describe this plainly is not bias. It is clarity.
But in today’s performance layer of media, clarity is dangerous. It exposes the institution to attack. It forces executives to choose between principle and protection.
They chose protection.
And so Moran is gone. Labeled “independent journalist” on X. Except this time, the exile is not so quiet.
Moran took his skills, talent and decades of experience to Substack. He now sits at #1 on the platform, with more than 70,000 subscribers and counting. The audience ABC feared offending has followed him there.
The message is clear. There is a hunger for journalism unshackled from corporate caution and risk management.
Meanwhile, Disney mends fences. ABC rebuilds access. The machinery of corporate media grinds on, smoothing reality to fit the requirements of the moment.
What is forgotten here is not just one man’s career. It is the purpose of journalism itself.
The language is missing. Words like courage. Conscience. Moral memory.
What is left are “standards.” The kind that contort themselves around power.
This is how decency erodes. Not with one dramatic fall, but through a series of small, tolerated cruelties.
And the occasional, surprising refusal to play along.