Carr told NR that he’s pleased to see CBS living up to the standard they agreed to as a condition of the Paramount merger.
Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr believes CBS has begun returning to its journalistic mission under new leadership.
Carr approved film studio Skydance’s $8 billion merger with Paramount in August on the condition that CBS provide unbiased coverage and eliminate discriminatory programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“When CBS’s transaction came before the FCC, we put some conditions in place where they agreed to return to more fact-based, unbiased reporting. And I’m pleased that they are living up to that standard,” Carr told NR in a brief interview at the Federalist Society’s annual convention last week.
Carr has received substantial blowback from across the political spectrum for taking what many view as an outsize role in dictating to private companies how they should cover the news. But Carr points out that broadcast television providers have a distinct function in the broader media ecosystem that requires them to act in the public’s best interest.
“If you have the unique privilege, though, of holding a broadcast television license, you’re required as part of that bargain to operate in the public interest, and that means you have to operate differently than maybe you would have if you were purely running a cable channel,” Carr stated.
Shortly after the merger, Paramount CEO brought in the Free Press founder Bari Weiss to be CBS’s new editor in chief. Known for her pro-Israel views and opposition to progressive identity politics, Weiss is already making personnel changes at the vaunted network. CBS bought the Free Press for $150 million after the startup gained over 1 million Substack subscribers and regularly drove political discourse in its first few years of existence.
Weiss has already fired dozens of employees and nixed multiple streaming shows. She quickly got rid of CBS’s race and culture unit, the network’s internal left-wing division, and several TV personalities.
CBS also hired an ombudsman, longtime conservative foreign policy expert Kenneth Weinstein, to handle bias complaints at the network. Weinstein lacks journalistic experience and is known for his work with the Hudson Institute, a hawkish foreign policy think tank.
In 2024, CBS was embroiled in several controversies including allegations that its flagship program 60 Minutes deceptively edited an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris to help her campaign. Trump and Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against CBS because of its handling of the Harris interview.
Critics accused Paramount of agreeing to settle the lawsuit in order to get the Trump administration to approve the pending merger. CBS also canceled liberal late night comedian Stephen Colbert’s show, a program that had been running a $40 million annual deficit and experiencing a ratings decline.
Carr has inserted himself into other media controversies during his time atop the FCC. Most notably, he pressured ABC into canceling liberal comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show over Kimmel’s widely criticized comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on a right-wing podcast days before Kimmel was removed from the air. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Kimmel was briefly removed from the air but later returned to his show after bipartisan condemnation. Carr continues to position himself as President Trump’s referee of the mainstream media ecosystem, raising the profile of what is normally an obscure regulatory agency.
Carr has explored the possibility of investigating ABC’s The View because of the talk show’s liberal slant. The View devotes significant airtime to criticizing Republicans, a perspective brought by its liberal personalities and conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump staffer turned critic of the MAGA movement.
Carr discussed the possibility the FCC revisits the equal opportunities rule for programs like The View where Republican candidates are oftentimes not given equal airtime to their Democratic counterparts.
“It’s important that the FCC revisit that and make sure the bonafide news exception is not applying much more broadly than Congress intended,” Carr said. He referred to a carve-out of the equal opportunities rule that allows certain news categories to be exempt from the equal opportunities rule.
In defending his interventions, Carr has cited the FCC’s “news distortion” policy, which allows the agency to sanction broadcasters if “they have deliberately distorted a factual news report.” A bipartisan group of former FCC chairs petitioned the agency this week to eliminate the policy on the grounds that it’s being abused by the Trump administration.
When asked by NR, he did not rule out the possibility of further action against broadcasters. Carr emphasized that broadcasters have to renew their licenses every few years and the FCC can use the renewal process to pursue accountability.
Carr’s push to use the FCC’s regulatory authority to lessen the mainstream media’s liberal bias is happening at a time when trust in the U.S. media is at all time lows. The lack of trust in the media, particularly among independents and Republicans, is an issue Carr points to when discussing the need for more regulatory action to ensure the media attempts to be non-partisan.