The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is readying a plan to launch broad investigations against telecommunications service providers and licensed radio and television broadcasters with a specific focus on their diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DEI) initiatives, The Desk has learned.
The strategy for those probes will be informed by a pending investigation by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau against Comcast, which offers cable TV and broadband Internet service under the Xfinity brand name and who operates dozens of NBC- and Telemundo-owned local TV stations across the country.
The FCC regulates Xfinity as a public utility, and Comcast-owned NBC and Telemundo TV stations as licensed broadcasters. On Tuesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said he ordered the Enforcement Bureau to probe whether Comcast’s DEI initiatives violated federal employment rules and other regulations. The investigation comes after President Donald Trump signed multiple executive orders in January that eliminated DEI programs throughout the federal government.
A Comcast spokesperson told The Desk by e-mail it intends to cooperate with the FCC’s probe.
“For decades, our company has been built on a foundation of integrity and respect for all of our employees and customers,” the spokesperson wrote. Materials published on Comcast’s websites — which were still accessible Wednesday afternoon — show the company has made significant gains in hiring women and minorities to executive roles and in the newsrooms of its licensed TV stations.
The FCC will use materials from the outcome of the Comcast investigation to determine how it should probe other telecoms and broadcasters on the issue of DEI initiatives, two officials at the FCC told The Desk by telephone. Both declined to be identified by name or position, because they were not authorized to speak with the news media about the matter.
One source said the FCC intends to concentrate its efforts on large-scale media and entertainment operations, including TV and radio broadcasters that operate both commercial and not-for-profit stations.
“When Chairman Carr said there were no ‘sacred cows,’ that is precisely what he meant,” one FCC official said, referring to statements published by Carr on social media and repeated in at least one TV news interview.
The two officials who confirmed the FCC’s intention to launch further probes on DEI were unwilling to say whether the agency has identified other telecoms or broadcasters as potential targets of future investigations.
The letter sent by Carr to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts on Tuesday comes the same week that PBS affirmed it would shut down its DEI office, with two employees assigned to the unit leaving the organization. PBS CEO Paula Kerger specifically cited Trump’s executive order in an all-staff memo announcing the closure of the DEI unit. The non-profit distributor of public TV programming received a letter from Carr in January with concerns over the handling of sponsorship messaging on PBS and NPR member stations.
Last month, Carr ordered three probes against local TV stations — two each in New York City and one in Philadelphia — to be re-opened after his predecessor, Jessica Rosenworcel, dismissed them weeks prior to his promotion. Rosenworcel said the investigations against WCBS-TV (Channel 2) and WNBC (Channel 4) in New York and WPVI (Channel 6, ABC) in Philadelphia were politically-motivated.
