Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran says the network dramatically altered his 2021 investigation into the COVID-19 lab leak theory just hours before it was scheduled to air, describing the episode as the only time during his ABC career that he felt what he called the “heavy hand of censorship.”
Moran, who left ABC in 2025 after being suspended for social media comments calling Stephen Miller and President Donald Trump “world-class” haters, discussed the incident Friday on “The Fifth Column” podcast.
According to Moran, he began examining the lab leak possibility in early 2021 after hearing arguments from people he considered “smart and serious” suggesting COVID may have originated in a laboratory.
He pitched the investigation to “Nightline,” and producers enthusiastically approved the idea. Moran said the report included interviews with molecular virologists and former Trump administration officials.
He also said the investigation “broke a little news” involving the Wuhan laboratory, claiming a U.S. intelligence source told him the facility had received funding from the Chinese military.
After completing his reporting, Moran said he personally believed a natural origin remained “probably a little bit more likely.” But he also said he would not have been surprised if the virus had escaped from a laboratory.
“But I didn’t reach that conclusion. I just laid it out,” Moran said.
The trouble, according to Moran, began on the day the report was supposed to air.
“We’re ready to go,” he recalled, saying the piece underwent a review and was returned to him in a form he considered “incomprehensible.”
Moran said the report had been reviewed by lawyers, ABC standards officials and, he was told, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The former correspondent said he became furious while attempting to record the approximately 15-minute piece, telling the podcast hosts he was “cursing and screaming in the booth.”
Moran said the finished report contained so many caveats and had become so “legalized” that he no longer considered it his work.
“I’ve never watched that story and never want to because it wasn’t mine,” he said.
When pressed about whether ABC actually provided Fauci with the script, Moran emphasized that he did not personally know whether that happened.
“It would have been the script, that’s what I was told. I don’t know that that’s true personally, but I was told that,” he said.
Moran also argued that discussion of the lab leak possibility had effectively been shut down at the time.
He pointed to what he described as an organized campaign involving Peter Daszak to persuade scientists to reject the possibility of a laboratory origin and portray those suggesting otherwise as participating in racism.
Moran said ABC News standards officials took that position “absolutely to heart.”
“It was not going to be discussed,” Moran said, adding that the lab leak possibility “was killed for a while.”
