Terry Moran Says ABC News Rejected His Biden Health Story
Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran says he pitched a story on President Biden's visible frailty in 2023 and was shut down by network leadership, who told him it was the medical unit's business. The claim adds to a broader debate over how major outlets covered questions about Biden's health.
Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran said this week that he tried to report on concerns about then-President Joe Biden's declining health but was blocked by senior network leadership, according to an interview with The Daily Beast podcast. Moran, a veteran correspondent who left ABC News last year, said he pitched the story in late 2023 or early 2024 after observing Biden up close during a trip to Japan in spring 2023.
«I had actually traveled with him to Japan in the spring of 2023 and kind of eyeballed him there, and I thought, 'Okay, he's still functioning, but man, he's frail,'» Moran said. «He looked like he'd blow away in a stiff wind.» He added that by Biden's final year in office, the president's voice had become merely a «whisper.»
Moran said he sent an email pitch to his editors, framing the story as a legitimate issue for American voters. «I tried to do the story of Biden's health before anybody else did in network, because I'd seen it,» he said. «And I got shut down very hard.» According to Moran, ABC News leadership told him the president's health was «the medical unit's business, not yours.»
In his pitch, Moran said he was careful not to diagnose Biden, but argued that ordinary observation was enough to raise the subject. «I'm not a doctor. I'm not diagnosing. But we all know what we know when we see people fading,» he said. «We all have had grandparents. We're all getting old ourselves. And so there's no doubt about it, this is a legitimate concern for the voters of America.»
Fox News Digital reached out to ABC News for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Moran departed ABC News after a social media post in which he called President Donald Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller «world-class haters.» An ABC News spokesperson confirmed at the time that the network had decided not to renew his agreement, citing a violation of network policies.
The episode has renewed attention on how major media outlets handled questions about Biden's health and mental acuity while he was in office. Several books and reports since his departure have alleged that aides concealed the extent of his decline. Among them is «Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,» co-authored by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, which draws on more than 200 interviews and argues that Biden's inner circle hid signs of decline from the public.
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert told Fox News Digital that Moran was simply doing his job as a reporter. «Moran was doing exactly what reporters are paid to do: he noticed something and wanted to ask questions about it,» Alpert said. «You don't have to diagnose Biden to report that he appeared different. We make observations about people every day without knowing the medical explanation for them. Saying 'I see a change' and saying 'I know what's causing that change' are completely different statements.»
Alpert added that institutions often avoid information that creates problems for them. «Sometimes it's easier not to look too closely and that seems to be exactly what ABC was doing,» he said. «I think what ultimately hurts credibility is the gap between what the public thinks is obvious and what an institution is willing to acknowledge. The wider that gap gets, the more people start wondering whether they're getting the whole story. A journalist's job is to be willing to ask the questions, even without knowing all the answers.»
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