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Skydance Media needs the approval of President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission in order to take over Paramount Global. It’s now promising to root out “bias” at CBS News in order to get it.
In a pair of letters filed Tuesday with the FCC, Skydance committed to a post-merger “comprehensive review of CBS,” including a promise to install an ombudsman to evaluate complaints of “bias or other concerns” at the news network and report their findings to the new Paramount’s president.
Skydance also committed to eliminating Paramount’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices at the entertainment giant once it takes over. The letters touted that Skydance does not and will not have any DEI programs in place.
The letters demonstrate Skydance CEO David Ellison’s eagerness to complete the deal to merge with Paramount, which was first agreed upon in July 2024. Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, was spotted meeting with Trump ringside at multiple UFC events this year.
Amid its push for Trump administration approval of the merger, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million earlier this month to settle a lawsuit filed last year by President Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The settlement generated outrage both inside and outside Paramount, not least because legal experts believed the lawsuit to be frivolous.
Critics of the settlement used words like “bribe” to describe the payment because of the leverage President Trump held over the pending merger. However, Paramount maintained that “this lawsuit is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process.”
FCC chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist, has also said the merger review process is separate — despite previously stating the “60 Minutes” case would be “likely to arise” in his agency’s review.
Less than two weeks after the settlement, Ellison met with Carr and other FCC officials. Those meetings took place amid reports that Skydance had made a “side deal” with Trump for an additional $15 million or more in airtime for public service announcements promoting Trump-aligned causes.
In Skydance’s first letter to Carr, Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon, the entertainment company’s general counsel and co-president of business operations, committed to a “comprehensive review” of CBS, stressing Skydance’s recognition that the broadcast network is “charged with operating in the public interest.”
Kyoko McKinnon further said that Skydance will “make any necessary changes to ensure compliance” and ensure CBS upholds “viewpoint diversity.”
“After consummation of the proposed transaction, New Paramount’s new management will ensure that the company’s array of news and entertainment programing embodies a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum, consistent with the varying perspective of the viewing audience,” Kyoko McKinnon wrote to Carr — promising to install the ombudsman for at least two years.
Such a commitment plays directly to President Trump and the MAGA movement’s long-held belief that news outlets like CBS are biased against conservative viewpoints.
Similarly, the second letter’s signaling that the new Paramount will eliminate the company’s existing DEI policies speaks to a key conservative initiative of Trump’s second term. Over the last six months, the Trump administration has rolled back DEI policies, largely through threats to investigate the private companies that maintain them. The most recent high-profile example of this was Verizon’s merger this spring with Frontier, which was greenlit only after the telecom giant made DEI concessions.
Paramount and Skydance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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