Paramount announced that they are changing their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies to comply with the Trump administration’s new mandates. And by changing, they meant rolling them back. The news comes as Paramount seeks FCC approval for its merger with Skydance. Employees received a memo Wednesday from Paramount co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins, which stated “some of our policies must change to comply with these new mandates.” Paramount will “longer set or use aspirational numerical goals related to the race, ethnicity, sex or gender of hires,” and will only collect data on applicant race, ethnicity, sex or gender data in states which require it by law.
Paramount has completely gotten rid of its DEI qualitative metric on its short-term incentive plan. These changes echo similar ones at Disney and Amazon to comply with the Trump administration’s crusade against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
The other sticky wicket in the Paramount-Skydance merger is Trump’s current lawsuit against CBS News. Trump sued CBS over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which he alleges was deceptively edited. The Trump-appointed FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has said the lawsuit will most likely play a factor in whether the merger is approved.