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.
“I have asked the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to open an investigation into Disney and ABC,” Carr wrote in a March 27 letter addressed to Disney CEO Robert Iger. “In particular, I want to ensure that Disney and ABC have not been violating FCC equal employment opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” The ABC media brand is owned by Disney.
“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.”
The company launched a “Reimagine Tomorrow” initiative to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, according to the letter. The initiative aimed to “amplify underrepresented voices.”
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.”
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.”
