Former ABC News Correspondent Terry Moran said the network censored his COVID-19 lab-leak story for “Nightline” in 2021, after Dr. Anthony Fauci reviewed it just hours before it was set to air.
In an interview last week on “The Fifth Column” podcast, Moran said it was the only time in his nearly 20-year career at ABC News that he felt the “heavy hand of censorship.”
ABC News fired Moran in June 2025 for violating its news policies after he called President Donald Trump and top White House Aide Stephen Miller “haters” on social media. After he left the network, Moran started the news outlet Real Patriotism.
On the podcast, Moran said that “Nightline” had been planning to air his segment on the origins of COVID-19 and evidence that the virus may have been created in — and leaked from — a lab.
He said he pitched the idea to “Nightline” in early 2021 after people he thought were “smart and serious” argued the virus likely came from a lab.
The segment contained interviews with molecular biologists and former Trump administration officials. It also “broke a little news” based on information from sources in the “three-letter agencies” who said the Chinese military had funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the lab that was researching coronaviruses.
“At the end of the day,” Moran said he thought the virus probably had a natural origin. However, he didn’t share that conclusion in the “Nightline” piece.
The segment was ready to air and went for review. When Moran got the edited script back, he said it was “incomprehensible,” adding, “I’d never been angrier.”
Moran said the script was reviewed by “lawyers’ standards, and — I was told — Fauci.”
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