BS BULLETIN
- Former ABC correspondent Terry Moran says his 2021 lab-leak investigation was dramatically rewritten after, he was told, its script was sent to Anthony Fauci for review.
- Moran says he became “absolutely livid” and refused to consider the final broadcast his work.
- The allegation lands as Fauci faces renewed scrutiny over his media relationships and COVID-era communications.
Well, this one deserves an explanation.
Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran — hardly a card-carrying member of the Anthony Fauci Resistance — says the network radically altered his 2021 investigation into the COVID-19 lab-leak theory after he was told the script had been sent to Fauci himself.
Not fact-checking Fauci’s statements. Not asking Fauci for comment. According to what Moran says he was told, ABC sent the script to Fauci while preparing the report for broadcast. Then the story came back so thoroughly rewritten that Moran says he barely recognized his own work.
“It comes back to me, and it is incomprehensible.”
Moran told The Fifth Column podcast that he was furious.
“I have never been angrier.”
And when asked who had reviewed it, Moran replied:
“Lawyers, standards and, I was told, Fauci.”
That’s quite a sentence.
Moran isn’t retroactively claiming that he had cracked the case and ABC suppressed definitive proof that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In fact, he says that after doing the reporting, his own judgment at the time still leaned slightly toward natural origin. But he believed the lab-leak possibility was credible enough to investigate.
Moran recalled seeing “smart and serious” people raising questions about it and getting approval from Nightline to pursue the story.
He interviewed scientists and former Trump administration officials and said the piece “laid it out” without reaching a definitive conclusion.
His personal assessment? A natural origin was probably somewhat more likely. But if someone told him the virus escaped from a laboratory? Fine. He considered that plausible too. In other words, Moran was doing something reporters once regarded as their actual job: Investigating an unresolved question.
Moran says the rewritten version was loaded with so many qualifications and legalistic caveats that it became nearly impossible to understand.
He was in the booth as airtime approached.
And he lost it.
“I’m cursing and screaming in the booth.”
Moran said he normally prides himself on treating colleagues professionally, but this time he was “absolutely livid, beside myself.” He says he has never watched the completed report. And doesn’t want to.
“It wasn’t mine.”
A veteran network correspondent spent months reporting a controversial story, watched it get transformed on the day of broadcast and subsequently refused to watch the final product because he no longer considered it his journalism.
Did ABC really send the script to Fauci? Moran does not claim he personally witnessed an ABC executive hand the script to Fauci. Podcast host Michael Moynihan asked him directly whether ABC had sent Fauci the transcript or video.
Moran answered:
“It would’ve been the script — that’s what I was told.”
Then he immediately qualified it:
“I don’t know if that’s true personally, but I was told that.”
If you’re investigating one of the most consequential scientific controversies in modern history, and Anthony Fauci is a central government figure in that controversy, why would he be reviewing your script before viewers see it?
Getting his response is journalism. Letting him preview the journalism before publication is something else entirely. ABC owes viewers a straightforward explanation of exactly what happened.
Moran’s allegation becomes more combustible because it arrives amid renewed scrutiny of Fauci’s private COVID-era records.
Recently released diary material obtained by Sen. Rand Paul has revealed numerous interactions between Fauci and prominent journalists, including figures at CNN, NBC and ABC.
The diary describes friendly communications and behind-the-scenes interactions with media personalities including George Stephanopoulos, Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Andrea Mitchell.
Again, government officials speaking to reporters isn’t scandalous.
But the line becomes considerably more interesting if a government official central to a disputed story is allowed to see a network’s investigative script before it airs — particularly if substantial changes follow.
That’s why ABC’s side of Moran’s story matters.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Moran’s accusation is that he isn’t presenting himself as a Fauci enemy.
Quite the opposite. Moran criticized what he called the “demonization” of Fauci and described him as a public servant who did his best.
That makes Moran’s criticism of ABC harder to dismiss as partisan score-settling.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Fox News — Ex-ABC correspondent claims network overhauled lab-leak report after sending script to Fauci
- The Fifth Column — Terry Moran interview
- Fox News — Fauci diary reveals relationships with prominent media figures
- FBI — Statement on FBI assessment of COVID-19 origins
- CIA — CIA assessment of COVID-19 origins
