‘Stunned but not shocked’: Terry Moran on US media caving to weaponised FCC & ‘petty autocrat’ Trump

‘Stunned but not shocked’: Terry Moran on US media caving to weaponised FCC & ‘petty autocrat’ Trump

He uh was a uh leading journalist at the network ABC and serving most notably as a White House correspondent. He grilled Donald Trump back in April in a television interview. With us is Terry Moran who was let go by ABC uh its parent company which is trying to buy these cable channels. this after a late night tweet uh that criticized Donald Trump and his eminance gre Steven Miller. Terry Moran, thanks for being with us here on France 24. Glad to be with you. First off, your reaction to uh this suspension of the Jimmy Kimmel show. You know, stunned but not shocked really. This is something now that we are getting used to. Not just that Trump, like every petty autocrat, believes that his whims, his wishes, his resentments will be the law, but that the corporations will always knuckle under, right? I mean, that’s what we’re discovering, which is that at the slightest pressure, you know, Jimmy Kimmel didn’t even really say anything that that bad, you know, and even if he did really, it’s supposed to be a country with free speech, but the corporations fear for the bottom line, for the dollars, and they collapse at every breath of uh anger from Donald Trump. And that’s what happened here. Is this something new? Yes. Yes. This is something new. Look, we’ve had cancel culture in the United States, excuse me, on the left and on the right. When people mobilize to uh ostracize or silence someone who said something they didn’t like, it’s kind of like a boycott. Sometimes politicians participate. But this was the power of the presidency and of the person directly responsible for regulating the broadcast networks saying you can do it the hard way or the easy way. You get rid of this guy or we come in. That fist has never been used by any president that I can think of before like this. Yeah. And again, there was this head of the uh a broadcast authority in the United States, the FCC. uh he made this this threat before uh Kimmel was uh let go effectively uh speaking on the show of a conservative podcast host uh Brenton Carr. Let’s take a listen to him who went further. All right, that that this is the this is the clip that was played earlier by uh that we showed you earlier. He he goes on to list all the basically all the scalps he’s had, including yours, Terry Moran. Um first off, should the head of uh a broadcast authority be appearing on uh on a conservative talk show host’s podcast? Well, I mean, podcasts are new form of communication. I don’t mind that. He doesn’t have any jurisdiction over them. The odd thing is that the Federal Communications uh Commission was set up in the 1930s and so its jurisdiction is over broadcasters through the airwaves, right? And podcasts generally come over, you know, streaming services and your cable or whatever it is. Very different thing that said, yeah, he should he can be out there. What he shouldn’t be doing is essentially making their demands the law. ABC would have won this case in court if the head of the broadcast authority said, “I want to take away the licenses from ABC affiliates.” The first one would have gone to court and say he made a joke that maybe he didn’t like. That is not the power of the broadcast authority of the president of the United States. But that broadcast authority would have had the authority to shoot down this uh deal to buy television stations that it’s looking for. Now, that’s a great point. So they find every pressure point that they can and exploit it. And there is this giant deal uh bill multi-billion dollar deal going down having to do with the local stations and one company wants to buy some from another company. They will need the approval of the broadcast authority and that’s the pressure point and Disney folded. Terry Moran, you’re uh you’ve been a war correspondent, a White House correspondent. You’ve been all over the world. uh today. Are you unhirable on a US television network? Well, I’m going on CNN a couple of times uh a week. I I don’t I don’t think so. But frankly, this is the the next media, the next US presidential campaign will take place in news spaces, you know, Substack, YouTube, Acts, whatever, much more so than on the traditional broadcast networks. I had a great career. I loved it. I left on an accelerated schedule, but into something that I think is is much more promising. What I what it what I am is heartbroken. I can’t I I can’t believe it. Feels like I’m losing my country with this. They fired me. Fine. They didn’t like what I wrote. Whatever. It’s their company. But the fact that that they’re doing it again and again and again and paying Trump money and the law firms and corporations just bending the knee to the exercise of a personalized presidential power like nothing we’ve ever seen. It feels like like I’m losing something precious. I I I don’t think we will in the long run. I think he’s overreaching. I think the mass of of of American public don’t want a radical change in the Constitution. But it’s a scary moment and for uh people who are going into journalism uh who might be self-censoring out of fear uh you the old adage you’re supposed to speak truth to power um for them is this reversible what’s happening now or or is the United States crossed a point of no return I don’t want to say that the United States has crossed a point of no return I I don’t believe that but the combination of oligarchical power uh in media and in social media and a a movement, the Trumpist movement, which is trying to centralize power in themselves and make it impossible for the other side to win again. We’ve seen this again and again around the world. That’s where we are. But I don’t think they win at the end of the day. At the end of the day, the mass of Americans, the great muddled middle of this country doesn’t want a radical change. They want pragmatic policies that will help them live better. This is a vengeance tour by people who’ve been angry at the media over the years and Trump is just the guy to do it for them. But it’s a close-run thing right now. Terry Moran, so many thanks for speaking with us here on France 24. Thank you.

Tonight’s special guest for Top Story is Terry Moran, former veteran correspondent and anchor for ABC News. Following nearly three decades of service at the Disney company, he was abruptly let go after sharing a scathing critique on social media of the highly controversial policies of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller that he asserted were fuelled and driven by hate. And now Mr. Moran weighs in on why ABC has indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! amid political pressure and blowback from the FCC, all the while facing the wrath of two very powerful media companies, Nexstar and Sinclair, the owners of dozens of ABC affiliates across the country.
#TerryMoran #ABC #JimmyKimmel

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