FCC chair opens investigation into Disney and ABC for DEI practices

The Federal Communications Commission has launched an investigation into Walt Disney Co. and its broadcast subsidiary ABC over the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Chairman Brendan Carr said Friday.

The investigation will “ensure that Disney and ABC have not been violating FCC equal employment opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination,” Carr wrote in a letter posted on X and addressed to Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger.

Though Carr noted that the company had recently softened some of its DEI efforts, including changing a performance standard titled “diversity and inclusion” that was used to calculate executive pay, he said “significant concerns remain.”

“I want to ensure that Disney ends any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name,” he wrote.

A Disney spokesperson said in a statement that the company was “reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s letter, and we look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions.”

The Disney investigation comes about a month after Carr opened an inquiry into Comcast Corp.’s employee programs, stepping up the agency’s efforts to “root out” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that it said may violate equal employment laws.

Comcast was the first media company to face such an inquiry. Disney appears to be the second. The Philadelphia-based Comcast previously said in a statement that it would be “cooperating with the FCC to answer their questions.”

Under Carr, the FCC also reopened a news bias complaint against ABC News for its handling of the September debate between then-Vice President Kamala Harris and President Trump.

Trump and other conservatives cried foul because debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis pushed back against Trump’s inaccurate statements, including that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets. Conservatives complained that the network only fact-checked Trump, thus giving preferential treatment to the Democrat nominee, Harris.

ABC News has defended its handling of the debate, which was the sole matchup between the two presidential candidates.

Carr’s predecessor, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, had dismissed four open news bias complaints in the waning days of her term.

Carr promptly reopened three of the complaints — against CBS News for its controversial “60 Minutes” interview with Harris, NBC for allowing Harris to appear on “Saturday Night Live” just days before the November election, and the complaint against ABC. Carr did not reopen a complaint against Fox that Rosenworcel had also dismissed.

This is not Carr’s first admonition of Disney. In December, Carr sent a letter to Iger, accusing ABC of contributing to an “erosion in public trust.” Conservatives, including Carr, say that liberal bias among the major news organizations, including ABC News, has caused viewers to lose faith in journalists.

In December, Disney settled a defamation suit that Trump had filed against ABC and its news anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Trump had filed the lawsuit last spring against ABC News and Stephanopoulos, who incorrectly said on air that Trump had been found liable for rape in an encounter with author E. Jean Carroll. The civil court jury determined Trump was liable for sexual abuse.

Disney agreed to pay $15 million to settle the lawsuit, money that will go to build a future presidential library for Trump. Disney also agreed to pick up $1 million of Trump’s legal fees.