How the Trump FCC justified requiring a “bias monitor” at CBS

The Federal Communications Commission’s approval of CBS owner Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance came with a condition to install an ombudsman, which FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has described as a “bias monitor.” It appears that the bias monitor will make sure the news company’s reporting meets standards demanded by President Donald Trump.

“One of the things they’re going to have to do is put an ombudsman in place for two years, so basically a bias monitor that will report directly to the president [of Paramount],” Carr told Newsmax on Thursday, right after the FCC announced its approval of the merger.

The Carr FCC claims there is precedent for such a bias monitor. But the precedent cited in last week’s merger approval points to a very different case involving NBC and GE, one in which an ombudsman was used to protect NBC’s editorial independence from interference by its new owner.

By contrast, it looks like Paramount is hiring a monitor to make sure that CBS reporting doesn’t anger President Trump. Paramount obtained the FCC’s merger approval only after reaching a $16 million settlement with Trump, who sued the company because he didn’t like how CBS edited a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Trump claimed last week that Paramount is providing another $20 million worth of “advertising, PSAs, or similar programming,” and called the deal “another in a long line of VICTORIES over the Fake News Media.”

NBC/GE precedent was “viewpoint-neutral”

The FCC merger approval says that “to promote transparency and increased accountability, Skydance will have in place, for a period of at least two years, an ombudsman who reports to the President of New Paramount, and who will receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS.”

The Carr FCC apparently couldn’t find a precedent that would closely match the ombudsman condition being imposed on Paramount. The above sentence has a footnote citing the FCC’s January 2011 approval of Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, saying the Obama-era order found “such a mechanism effective in preventing editorial bias in the operation of the NBC broadcast network.”