Skydance Media — the company seeking to purchase for $8 billion Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS — said in a letter dated Tuesday to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr that, among the changes they’d make to the company, they would hire an ombudsman to ensure “viewpoint diversity” and avoid “complaints of bias.”
While merely having an ombudsman isn’t a guarantee of success in ridding a legacy liberal outlet of rancorous bias (see outlets that have had ones before, such as The New York Times and NPR), it would be a good first step and likely trigger the many woksters inside CBS News.
Variety reviewed the letter, zeroing in on their pledge for having “an ombudsman who reports to the President of New Paramount, who will receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS” as way to “promote transparency and increased accountability.”
Penned by Skydance General Counsel Kyoko McKinnon, also said this would help achieve a previous pledge to oversee a CBS News built on the “importance of unbiased journalism and...presenting a diverse array of viewpoints on television...across the political and ideological spectrum[.]”
Variety’s Todd Spangler also wrote:
In a meeting last week with Carr and other FCC officials, Skydance CEO David Ellison had expressed Skydance’s “commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers,” per a company FCC filing.
It’s not clear how much closer Skydance’s assurances to the FCC brings it toward the agency approving the Paramount deal.
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In addition, according to the letter, Skydance “recognizes that, as a broadcast licensee, it will be charged with operating in the public interest, and the company intends to undertake a comprehensive review of CBS and to make any necessary changes to ensure compliance with that standard. In all respects, Skydance will ensure that CBS’s reporting is fair, unbiased, and fact-based. Moreover, Skydance reaffirms its commitment to localism as a core component of the public interest standard. Indeed, the CBS affiliate network’s over 200 local broadcast stations provide service throughout the country and are a trusted voice in local markets big and small.”
Last week, Spangler shared that “Skydance chief David Ellison met with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and others at the commission to lobby for the deal’s approval — and, notably, Ellison promised that CBS’s ‘editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers.’”
News for all Americans? If CBS were to follow suit of, say, NewsNation and Fox News in presenting a slew of viewpoints, the media ecosystem would be a far better and less toxic place.
