CBS’s parent company needs FCC approval for proposed merger
CBS Studios will settle a case brought by a script coordinator who accused the company of using illegal racial quotas to discriminate against straight white men.
Lawyers for both sides informed the court of the agreement on Friday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The case was filed in California by Brian Beneker, a script coordinator for the TV show SEAL Team, who alleged that “he was repeatedly denied a staff writer job after the implementation of an ‘illegal policy of race and sex balancing.'”
Under that policy, Beneker said, CBS Studios instituted hiring quotas for “less qualified applicants from certain groups, namely those who identify as minorities, LGBTQ, or women,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
News of the settlement announcement comes as the Federal Communications Commission investigates DEI policies in media companies. While FCC chairman Brendan Carr said in a February letter to Comcast and subsidiary NBCUniversal that he is investigating whether the companies’ DEI policies are discriminatory, NBC is clinging to racial quotas in hiring, a source told the Washington Free Beacon late last month.
Paramount, CBS Studios’ parent company, is seeking FCC approval of a proposed merger with Skydance. The commission is also investigating CBS News’s decision to edit an October interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris in what critics have called an attempt to make Harris’s answers sound more coherent.
While both sides have not disclosed the terms of the agreement, Beneker, who was represented by a group founded by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, sought at least $500,000, the position of full-time producer on SEAL Team, and a ban on hiring discrimination at the company, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Miller’s boss, President Donald Trump, has cracked down on DEI policies at a wide variety of institutions, including universities, law firms, and the military.
Major media companies such as Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount have started backing away from DEI amid the crackdown, the Hollywood Reporter noted, with Paramount scrapping “staffing goals tied to race, ethnicity, sex, and gender” and the collection of “gender and diversity data for most U.S. job applicants.”
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