FCC Chairman says probe into Disney’s DEI discrimination could cost ABC its broadcast license

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr spoke to Fox News’s Jacqui Heinrich on Monday, suggesting that Disney’s adherence to DEI could result in serious consequences for ABC.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

The pair discussed the investigation into The Walt Disney Company and the potential impacts of any gender and race-based discrimination in their hiring practices.

“Your probe into Disney’s DEI policies, their senior counsel writes, This is all about bullying and intimidation. Mr. Carr’s most powerful tool is his vote on the commission to approve mergers and acquisitions.’ Is this about Disney’s hiring practices or is it about something else?” Heinrich asked.

“Yeah, this is about the hiring practices and their employment practices. Look, broadcasters and Disney owns one, AB, they have an obligation under federal law. We have EEO rules at the FCC, which means you can’t make hiring decisions based on protected characteristics, including gender and race,” he explained. “And the evidence we have so far indicates potentially that Disney and ABC were making employment decisions based on race and gender, including having effectively race-defined affinity groups within the company. We have evidence that they put quotas in place based on specific demographics.”

“If the evidence does in fact play out and shows that they were engaged in race- and gender-based discrimination, that’s a very serious issue at the FCC that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license, but we’re gonna follow the facts wherever they go. Look, President Trump’s been clear, we are turning the page on DEI. The first week I was chairman of the FCC, I said we are ending our own promotion of DEI at the FCC. People would be shocked if they learned the millions of dollars that the FCC alone was spending to promote DEI; we had it listed as our second-highest strategic priority,” he added. “I mean, think about everything the FCC can and should be doing, national security issues, bridging the digital divide, space economy, and we had promoting DEI as our number two strategic priority. Now we’re going to focus on our core mission.”

“And just very, very quickly, because we’re actually completely out of time, but just to be clear, does the FCC think that they have authority to basically tell private companies, not talking about their hiring practices, but their programming? Is their programming up for debate here?” the host wondered.

“Well, what we’re focused on is the personnel practices. I mean, we’ll follow the investigation wherever it goes, but that’s fundamentally where we go. And again, broadcasters are different than cable. They’re different than online speech. They have special access to these airwaves. In exchange, they need to serve the public interest, and that’s what we are going to enforce at the FCC,” Carr confirmed.

Writer/Columnist

Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to BizPac Review.

Latest posts by Sierra Marlee (see all)

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.