Donald Trump’s pet FCC chair is now saying the not-especially-quiet part at what has become a frankly deafening sort of volume, as Brendan Carr declared in an interview today that media companies looking to get FCC approval for their various multi-billion dollar mergers should “get busy ending any sort of their invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”
Carr’s comments, delivered to Bloomberg, represent the latest, and in many ways most overt, salvo in the White House’s attacks on corporate efforts to commit the heinous sin of trying to figure out whether there might, just possibly, be some discriminatory biases lurking somewhere in their hiring practices. Carr didn’t mention Paramount, owner of CBS and a whole bunch of other media properties, by name, but it was presumably on his mind: The company’s recent efforts to smoosh itself together with Skydance Media have put it in a vulnerable position with the current administration, which has expressed a gleeful, “kid frying ants with a microscope” interest in using its regulatory powers to push corporations around. (Trump’s policies tend to be pretty dismissive of regulatory agencies, but seem to make an exception for ones that allow for easier and more efficient bullying.)
Carr didn’t mince words with his threats: “If there’s businesses out there that are still promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination, I really don’t see a path forward where the FCC could reach the conclusion that approving the transaction is going to be in the public interest.” Paramount, specifically, has already said it would step back from measuring “success in progress on companywide DEI initiatives, including aspirational representation goals.” But it’s not clear yet whether that will be enough, especially since Paramount-owned CBS News has refused to back down on a different point of conflict with the White House, Trump’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes over its decision to edit portions of an interview with Kamala Harris that aired back in October of 2024.
Carr (who was appointed as a commissioner back in 2017 and re-appointed by Joe Biden in 2023, before being named chair after Trump was re-elected) has this kind of authority as part of the FCC’s basic mandate, which involves issuing licenses to broadcast in the United States—licenses that have to be transferred, with FCC approval, any time one of these massive mergers goes down. One of the authors of Project 2025, Carr has, since becoming chair, been unabashed about his efforts to use the FCC as a political bludgeon. And, as we’ve noted in the past, it’s not like we’re wild about corporations making these kinds of massive merger moves, which consolidate cash and power and tend to shrink the media ecosystem in ways that are rarely creativity friendly, in the first place. But that doesn’t make holding them hostage to make corporations bend the knee to Trump’s anti-diversity policies any less chilling.
[via Deadline]
