2 weeks Ago By Naveen Athrappully
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has ordered a probe into Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies to assess whether they amount to discrimination, racial or otherwise. “In recent years, Disney made DEI a key priority for the company’s businesses and embedded explicit race- and gender-based criteria across its operations,” said the letter, adding that public reports “paint a disturbing picture of Disney’s DEI practices.” Disney mandated “inclusion standards” across ABC, with the network required to ensure that 50 percent of recurring and regular characters featured in its content, like TV shows, are from “underrepresented groups,” the letter said.
“These standards may have forced racial and identity quotas into every level of production—demanding that ‘50 percent or more’ of writers, directors, crew, and vendors be selected based on group identity.” ABC has restricted fellowships to certain demographic identities, used race-based hiring databases, and may have linked executive bonuses to their DEI performance, the FCC chairman wrote. The letter reminded Disney that FCC rules as well as the Communications Act prohibit regulated entities such as the company’s ABC network from discriminating against individuals on the basis of color, race, gender, age, national origin, or religion.
FCC’s equal employment opportunity rules specify certain requirements that Disney entities must strictly follow. “Although your company recently made some changes to how it brands certain efforts, it is not clear that the underlying policies have changed in a fundamental manner—nor that past practices complied with relevant FCC regulations.” “I want to ensure that Disney ends any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name,” the FCC chair said.
In addition, “I want to determine whether Disney’s actions—whether ongoing or recently ended—complied at all times with applicable FCC regulations.” In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a Disney spokesperson said, “We are reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s letter, and we look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions.” “And at my direction, the FCC has already taken action to end its own promotion of DEI.
I have been pleased to see that some regulated companies are already taking steps toward rooting out discriminatory DEI policies,” Carr wrote. Earlier in January, a spokesperson for Facebook owner Meta told The Epoch Times it was ending DEI in hiring, development, and procurement services. Major companies and other institutions were adopting and using “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation,” the order said.
The administration has been pushing ahead with its crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in several sectors..
