New CBS Owner Agrees to Government Censorship

The Trump $16 million extortion and Colbert firing paid by Paramount was rewarded yesterday by the FCC’s approval of Paramount’s sale of CBS to Skydance.  But, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it gets even worse:

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C., said in a statement that the agency had approved the deal after receiving assurances from Skydance that the new company would be committed to unbiased journalism and would not establish programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

In recent days, Skydance took steps to assuage Mr. Carr, telling the agency that it would install an official at the news division to ensure fairness in its journalism and committing to avoiding diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the company. In his statement, Mr. Carr lauded these steps, saying they would “begin the process of earning back Americans’ trust.”

Anna M. Gomez, a Democratic commissioner on the F.C.C., said in a statement that the agency had 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,” Ms. Gomez said.

www.nytimes.com/…

What makes this even more despicable is that the “bias” the right-wing Carr is supposedly upset by was addressed prior to 1988 by the Fairness Doctrine, which applied to broadcast news.  But it was the right-wing Reagan Administration that got rid of it.  Purportedly on First Amendment grounds.  Now the right-wing wants to restrict those same freedom of the press rights.  They want to have it both ways so their point of view remains dominant.