Brendan Carr, chairman for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said that Disney could face potential fines if the company’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies are shown to discriminate.
Carr issued his warning during an interview with Miranda Devine on Pod Force One, saying the Biden’s administration’s DEI initiatives had “practical consequences” in broadcasting.
“That had real, practical consequences. So, Day One, we came in and we ended the FCC’s promotion of DEI,” Carr said.
Carr said that companies like Disney could face fines and penalties if their DEI policies are shown to discriminate based on race and gender.
“Disney, which owns ABC: there’s been some really concerning evidence that has come to light that Disney DEI practices, that they were effectively discriminating against people, based on race and gender,” he said.
“We’re still looking at that, we’ll allow them to make their case, we have an open mind on it. But, we do have an investigation going on right now into Disney’s DEI practices,” he added. “And it could get bad for Disney, depending on what the facts show.”
Carr said that evidence says that the company had promotion opportunities that discriminated based on race and gender.
“There is evidence that they were creating internal promotions, internal work groups – again, siloing and dividing people based on race and gender,” he said. “And, again, the evidence indicates, and there may be counter-evidence out there, that you had promotion opportunities, or you were judged, on how much you were promoting people based on skin color.”
“That is something that is really invidious that I thought that, as a country, we had stopped doing 60, 70, 80 years ago,” Carr continued. “And, I’m glad we’re getting back to treating everyone, regardless of skin color, regardless of any other protected characteristics, based on their merits. That’s how it should be.”
Carr said that the policies may have possibly already hurt Disney at the box office.
“It’s sort of a symptom of what I view the broader media ecosystem being out of place,” Carr said.
“New York and Hollywood have never really been known for having the pulse of the cross-section of the country, but it got worse in the late twenty-teens and the early 2020’s, where we saw this significant explosion of DEI and woke ideology. And it was just fully embraced – hook, line and sinker – by New York and Hollywood,” he added.
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