The Federal Communications Commission gave its approval to a pending merger between Paramount Global and the movie studio Skydance on Thursday, clearing the way for the multibillion-dollar deal to close.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement that he was moved to approve the deal thanks to Skydance’s “commitments to … a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.”
“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately and fairly,” Carr said. “It is time for a change. That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once-storied CBS broadcast network.”
The commission’s approval and Carr’s comments about CBS come mere weeks after Paramount settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump for $16 million. The president had sued the corporation over a pre-election interview of Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes.” Though CBS News stood by its reporting and eventually released transcripts and all recorded video from the interview, the parent company opted to settle while the merger with Skydance was still awaiting approval from the Trump admin’s FCC. CBS host Stephen Colbert called the move a “big, fat bribe” days before the network announced the cancellation of his long-running late-night show. The network said that the decision was made for purely financial reasons.
While Carr celebrated a supposed diversity of views on the soon-to-be Skydance-owned network, he also painted the merger as part of “the FCC’s efforts to eliminate…forms of DEI.”
“Skydance will … adopt measures that can root out the bias that has undermined trust in the national news media. These commitments, if implemented, would enable CBS to operate in the public interest and focus on fair, unbiased, and fact-based coverage. Doing so would begin the process of earning back Americans’ trust,” he said.
Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, called the entire saga “alarming” and a “violation of the First Amendment.”
“After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted. Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions,” she said. “In an unprecedented move, this once-independent FCC used its vast power to pressure Paramount to broker a private legal settlement and further erode press freedom… Even more alarming, it is now imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”
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