The network cut Terry Moran loose on Tuesday after 28 years for posting on X that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller "is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world class hater… you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate."
He then posted that Donald Trump's hatred only serves "his own glorification."
The Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, quickly condemned Moran for his late-night X post criticizing Miller, which was swiftly deleted, but the network deemed it "a clear violation of ABC News policies."
The decision was made to not renew his contract.
Remembering the recent George Stephanopoulos settlement, Bill D'Agostino of the Media Research Center (MRC) says the strikes against ABC News are adding up.
In that case, the Walt Disney Co., ABC's corporate parent, agreed to pay $15 million to Donald Trump's presidential library in December after a court ruled Stephanopoulos defamed the president by accusing him of rape.
D'Agostino says ABC is trying to win back the trust of a very skeptical public, according to recent polls.
"I was a little surprised," he says of Moran's firing. "The things that Moran was saying were not something that you can have floating out there and then turn around and say, '…I can still cover this administration completely fairly. This won't factor in at all.'"
But after four years of peddling the Russia hoax, hiding the Hunter Biden laptop story, and other instances of journalistic malpractice, D'Agostino says ABC's reputation may be beyond repair.
"Nothing they do at this point, as small as firing Terry Moran is in the grand scheme of things, is really going to affect people's long-term opinion of ABC News," he concludes.
