When FCC chairman Brendan Carr announced last week that the Trump administration will block the business deals of media conglomerates that engage in discriminatory DEI practices, some employees at the liberal network MSNBC took notice.
“MSNBC could be in the administration’s crosshairs as well. The network is in the process of being spun off from its parent company,” MSNBC columnist Ja’Han Jones wrote after Carr’s statement that he would block media mergers and acquisitions involving firms that promote what he calls “discriminatory” DEI practices.
Jones was referring to SpinCo, the temporary name that Comcast has given the holding company for its planned spinoff of MSNBC, CNBC, and all but one of its other cable channels, which it’s jettisoning due to the terminally ill—yet still enormously profitable—cable TV business dragging down its share price.
The concern at Comcast and its subsidiary NBCUniversal is perhaps due to the media giant’s unusually aggressive promotion in recent years of DEI and social justice initiatives, as well as racial and gender quotas, which executives have said they hope will “change the face” of the media industry and induce “demographic change,” specifically at NBCUniversal.
Five years ago, when the racial justice movement was at a fever pitch after George Floyd’s death, NBCUniversal News Group president Cesar Conde unveiled what he called the “Fifty Percent Diversity Initiative” to make at least half of the company’s workforce non-white, and at the same time half female. Conde, who as a prominent and notoriously ambitious Latino executive has a seat on the board of Walmart (and was previously on PepsiCo’s board), was seizing the moment. In an interview with NPR, he said that the 50-50 program was a “concrete promise” and an “actual vow” to implement “demographic change” in order to correct “systemic inequality.”
Around the same time, inspired by George Floyd, Comcast pledged $100 million “toward fighting injustice and inequality toward Black people and other communities.” Craig Robinson, the executive in charge of distributing the money, remains NBCU’s “executive vice president and chief diversity officer.”
Back at the news group, Conde tapped Yvette Miley, an “openly LGBTQ+” MSNBC and local news veteran to serve as the news group’s executive vice president for DEI. She launched NBCU Academy, an initiative to train journalists of diverse backgrounds. Miley has said NBCU Academy is part of NBCUniversal’s “long game in committing to breaking down systemic barriers to entry into our entire industry.”
“The idea is to change the face of the industry,” she told Forbes.
NBCUniversal’s aggressive foray into DEI actually started in earnest in 2010 when Comcast was in the process of acquiring NBCUniversal from GE and, ironically in light of current circumstances, wanted to please Obama administration regulators and influential liberal members of Congress that the companies were sufficiently committed to racial diversity. In the years immediately up to and following the merger, NBCUniversal put influential black figures such as Rev. Al Sharpton on its payroll as on-camera contributors and gave its then-chief diversity officer, Paula Madison, the power to screen scripted entertainment programs and order changes to casting and plots.
But now the climate has changed. The Trump administration, with Carr serving as the tip of the spear, views a target quota for the racial makeup of a company’s workforce as a potential violation of federal anti-discrimination laws. Carr launched an investigation last month into whether Comcast’s and NBCUniversal’s DEI programs promote “invidious forms of discrimination” that violate federal laws and FCC regulations.
Carr said the companies fall under FCC regulation as “regulated entities,” but it’s not entirely clear whether the investigation could affect SpinCo, the planned Comcast spinoff.
Corporate legal experts say the spinoff is unlikely to require FCC approval, since the transaction only involves cable channels and doesn’t involve the transfer of over-the-air broadcasting licenses, as would be the case if the NBC network itself was part of the transaction. But President Donald Trump’s interest in addressing what he views as misconduct by the dominant media is what media analyst Blair Levin, writing about SpinCo, calls “the X factor.” The FCC, operating in concert with the FTC and other regulators under Trump’s oversight, could certainly complicate and delay the spinoff to the point where it would become very expensive and unsustainable.
Perhaps more importantly, Comcast, which is the second-biggest cable provider in the country after Spectrum and one of the world’s largest media companies, has regular business with the FCC that Carr could use as a cudgel.
In recent weeks, Trump has made DEI at white shoe law firms a focus of his executive orders regarding firms that employed lawyers who participated in investigations and prosecutions of him. As part of the deal he recently struck with the overtly liberal law firm Paul Weiss, the firm was required to roll back its internal DEI hiring policies.
But despite the looming FCC oversight, Comcast and its subsidiaries have given no indication that they will roll back or end DEI initiatives. And a source familiar with the company’s operations told the Washington Free Beacon that NBCUniversal, despite rolling layoffs and brutal budget cuts, has doubled down on Conde’s quotas, and that there’s no sign that MSNBC and CNBC—the NBC News properties being spun off—will alter course.
The source said that with women well represented in the TV news business, often occupying top roles on and off camera, the tension has been about achieving the racial rebalancing behind the scenes at a time of layoffs, austerity, and high demand for a relatively small pool of black news producers.
Reached for comment, Comcast and NBCUniversal would not address specific questions about the status of its DEI programs or Conde’s 50-50 initiative.
“We have received an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission and are cooperating with the FCC to answer their questions. For decades, our company has been built on a foundation of integrity and respect for all of our employees and customers,” a Comcast spokeswoman said.
It all marks an early test for Rebecca Kutler, who was appointed president of MSNBC earlier this year, with a key role of implementing the SpinCo spinoff. Kutler was a top deputy at CNN to former president Jeff Zucker when he oversaw the network’s aggressive anti-Trump coverage during the first Trump administration. She is known for cultivating liberal pundits such as former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki. Kutler has drawn criticism from some liberals early in her tenure—including an extraordinary on-air volley from Rachel Maddow—after MSNBC fired the divisive, far-left, black host Joy Reid, and reassigned other minority anchors at the network to lesser ensemble or correspondent roles. Indeed, Kutler’s move to fire Reid and demote Alex Wagner, who is half Asian and half white, means that all of MSNBC’s premier solo hosts (Maddow, Psaki, Chris Hayes, Nicolle Wallace, Ari Melber, Joe Scarborough, and Mika Brzezinski) are white. Black hosts, by contrast, will largely be featured in ensemble and weekend programs.
In an ironic twist, Conde and Miley had previously touted Reid’s show as one of its early DEI successes. “Joy Reid became the first African American woman to be in prime time in cable. And so we’re very proud of the incredible professional that Joy is, and to be able to have that as an example is also important in the overall development and recruitment of the next generation of leaders,” Conde said in 2020 (7 p.m. ET, when Reid’s show aired, is actually not considered prime time in the television business, where it starts at 8 p.m. ET). Previously, in 2018, Maddow crucially backed Reid after the revelation that she’d made multiple homophobic comments on a blog threatened her job (Reid made the widely mocked claim that she’d been hacked).
Miley reportedly lobbied MSNBC to promote Reid to a “prime time” show, which ran from 2020 until her firing last month. A source close to NBCUniversal tells the Free Beacon that Reid, whose post-election rhetoric against MAGA voters—as well as against white women—had become increasingly harsh, was “too hot to handle” with the spinoff under government scrutiny. “The issue was what she said about white women,” the source said.
While many saw the Reid ouster as MSNBC caving to pressure from the Trump administration, it did little to satisfy the president himself. Trump cheered the firing of Reid—a “mentally obnoxious racist”—and referred to “Concast” chairman Brian Roberts as a “lowlife.” And he criticized Al Sharpton, who in the years since the Comcast merger has become a longtime MSNBC host on the weekends, as a “LOW IQ Con Man,” and questioned, “What is he doing to Brian Roberts to stay on the air?”
Sharpton’s weekend show, PoliticsNation, could prove a factor in the FCC’s investigation of the network’s DEI operations. Sharpton has long been accused—including by the black executive Byron Allen—of using diversity as a weapon to extract money from white-run corporations in order to get his approval, which historically has helped smooth the way for these corporations in Washington. Since January, Sharpton has teased a boycott he plans to announce through his nonprofit, the National Action Network, against two corporations that have ended their DEI programs.
Sharpton has also been under scrutiny since the revelation, reported by the Free Beacon, that his group accepted a six-figure donation from the Kamala Harris campaign in 2024 around the same time as he conducted a fawning interview with Harris on his MSNBC show. NBCUniversal later said it was not aware of the situation before it was over.
Sharpton will announce the targeted companies of his DEI campaign at his National Action Network convention next week. MSNBC hosts Ari Melber, Symone Sanders, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez, along with former MSNBC host Chris Matthews, are scheduled to speak at the conference. Joy Reid is also a featured guest for the event.
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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