Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran has alleged that ABC News substantially altered a report he led on the COVID-19 lab-leak theory after the network sent a draft to Dr Anthony Fauci for review. The claim raises questions about editorial independence and the handling of reporting on the origins of the pandemic, though it is an allegation by Moran rather than an independently established finding.

Moran said the original report was “butchered” and suggested that Fauci may have influenced the changes, according to Fox News. The dispute concerns coverage of the possibility that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, a theory that was initially widely contested but later treated by US intelligence agencies as a plausible explanation alongside natural transmission.