Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance was approved Thursday, marking a major shakeup in the media landscape. But inside CBS News — a Paramount subsidiary — concerns are growing over plans to install an ombudsman and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
“When the welcome gift of the new owner is a hall monitor, it isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of how the new ownership feels about the news division,” a CBS insider told Fox News Digital, requesting anonymity to avoid professional repercussions.
Ahead of the merger, Skydance committed to dismantling Paramount’s DEI initiatives and creating an ombudsman role to address perceived bias at CBS News. The ombudsman acts as an independent inspector general of sorts to investigate complaints – both public and internal – about the outlet’s reporting, and will report directly to the president of the new company, Skydance CEO David Ellison.
“I write to confirm the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that were in place at Paramount and to confirm our commitments moving forward,” Skydance general counsel Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon wrote in a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
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In February, Paramount announced it would abandon DEI hiring goals and remove DEI metrics from compensation packages — a move that sparked internal backlash. Skydance’s letter reinforced that DEI-based hiring and race or gender-based benchmarks would no longer be used, instead emphasizing merit and a wide talent pool.
Another CBS insider, also speaking anonymously, acknowledged that ombudsmen have been used in the past for both internal and external complaints. They warned, however, that the impact of the new ombudsman will depend on the individual chosen and the extent of their editorial authority.
CBS has long embraced DEI goals. “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert admitted in a 2018 New York Times interview that he refused to accept writing samples from men in order to diversify his team.
“It wasn’t until we said, ‘Please don’t send us anyone but women’… that I got 87 women. It’s not enough to say you want it, you have to go to the not ordinary step,” Colbert said.
CBS has since announced the end of “The Late Show,” with its final episode set for May 2026.
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After George Floyd’s death in 2020, CBS instituted a policy that half the contestants in reality programming be BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). CBS President George Cheeks also required 40 percent of writers on primetime shows to be BIPOC during the 2021–2022 season. A mentorship program launched that year selected seven writers out of 1,000 applicants — none of them White men.
“Our Writers Mentoring Program helps provide opportunities and build relationships with network executives and showrunners,” Tiffany Smith-Anoa’i, EVP of Entertainment Diversity and Inclusion at ViacomCBS, told Deadline.
CBS News has long-faced accusations of liberal and anti-Trump bias. In the 2024 vice presidential debate, moderator Margaret Brennan cut off Vice President J.D. Vance’s mic during a heated exchange on immigration.
Before the 2020 election, “60 Minutes” anchor Lesley Stahl dismissed then-President Trump referencing the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. “This is ’60 Minutes,’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Stahl said at the time.
CBS News later authenticated the laptop in 2022.
Trump later sued Paramount over its 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing the network of omitting a garbled response about the Gaza war in the broadcast version. Paramount settled the lawsuit for $16 million earlier this month.
CBS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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