The president of the FCC opens investigation into Disney and ABC for practices

The Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation into Walt Disney Co. and its ABC distribution subsidiary on the company’s diversity, actions and inclusion programs, President Brendan Carr said on Friday.

The survey “will guarantee that Disney and ABC have not violated the regulations on the equal opportunities for the employment of the FCC by promoting prompt forms of discrimination of Dei”, wrote Carr in a letter published on X and addressed to the Disney Managing Director, Bob Iger.

Although Carr noted that the company had recently softened some of its efforts, in particular by modifying a performance standard entitled “Diversity and inclusion” which was used to calculate the remuneration of managers, he declared that “important concerns remain”.

“I want to make sure that Disney ends all the discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just the name,” he wrote.

A Disney spokesman said in a statement that the company “examined the letter from the Federal Commission Commission, and we are impatient to commit to the Commission to answer his questions”.

The Disney survey occurs about a month after Carr has opened an investigation into Comcast Corp. employees’ programs, intensifying the agency’s efforts to “eliminate” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives which, according to it, could violate the equality of employment.

Comcast was the first media company to face such an investigation. Disney seems to be the second. The Comcast, based in Philadelphia, previously said in a statement that he “would cooperate with the FCC to answer their questions”.

Under Carr, the FCC has also reopened a complaint of new bias against ABC News for its management of the September debate between the president of the time, Kamala Harris and President Trump.

Trump and other conservatives cried because the David Muir and Linsey Davis debate moderators postponed Trump’s inaccurate statements, including Haitian immigrants in Ohio ate people’s pets. The conservatives complained that the network only checked Trump, giving preferential treatment to the Democratic candidate, Harris.

ABC News defended its management of the debate, which was the only match between the two presidential candidates.

The predecessor of Carr, the Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, had rejected four complaints from new openings in the decreasing days of his mandate.

Carr quickly reopened three of the complaints – against CBS News for his controversial interview “60 minutes” with Harris, NBC for having allowed Harris to appear on “Saturday Night Live” a few days before the November elections, and the complaint against ABC. Carr did not commit a complaint against Fox that Rosenworcel had also rejected.

This is not the first Disney Carr warning. In December, Carr sent a letter to Iger, accusing ABC of having contributed to “erosion of public confidence”. The conservatives, including Carr, say that liberal prejudices among the main press organizations, including ABC News, have lost confidence in viewers in journalists.

In December, Disney set a defamation action that Trump had filed against ABC and his presenter from new George Stephanopoulos.

Trump had filed the trial last spring against ABC News and Stephanopoulos, who wrongly told Trump that Trump was found responsible for rape during a meeting with the author E. Jean Carroll. The jury of the civil court determined that Trump was responsible for sexual abuse.

Disney has agreed to pay $ 15 million to set up the trial, the money that will go to build a future presidential library for Trump. Disney also agreed to recover $ 1 million from Trump’s legal costs.