Here's what to know about agreement for CBS to accept 'bias monitor'

Following the July 2025 announcement that the FCC approved a deal for Skydance to acquire Paramount Global, the company that owns CBS, rumors spread online that, as part of the deal, CBS would have to accept an FCC-appointed "bias monitor" who reported directly to U.S. President Donald Trump.

A Facebook post (archived) shared more than 10,000 times claimed that one condition of the merger "is that CBS News must accept a 'bias monitor' appointed by Trump's FCC, and who reports DIRECTLY to President Trump himself." A video (archived) with more than 11,000 reactions on Facebook and more than 600,000 views on TikTok (archived) similarly claimed the "bias monitor" would "report directly to the president." Claims about a CBS bias monitor reporting to Trump were also seen well over 1 million times on multiple X posts (archived, archived) and on Reddit (archived).

Videos making the claim included a clip of Brendan Carr, the Trump administration's FCC head, telling Newsmax that CBS would put in place a bias monitor who "will report directly to the president."

While it is true that Skydance agreed the Paramount Skydance Corp. will "have in place" an ombudsman to evaluate complaints of bias at CBS as part of the company's agreement with the FCC, this ombudsman would not report directly to Trump and there was no evidence that the position would be filled by an FCC appointee. Therefore Snopes rates this claim as a mixture of truth and falsehood.

On July 22, 2025, Skydance wrote to Carr to "address concerns about media bias" raised during its attempt to acquire Paramount Global. As part of addressing those concerns, Skydance committed to having in place an ombudsman to "receive and evaluate any complaints of bias" at CBS. This ombudsman, Skydance wrote, would report to the president of the Paramount Skydance Corp.

On July 24, the FCC approved Skydance's acquisition of Paramount and highlighted the company's commitment to putting an ombudsman in place to report to the company's president and "evaluate complaints of bias." Carr and the FCC continued to use the same language in other communications about the merger, in which they highlighted that the company would "have in place" the ombudsman. In none of its communications did the FCC say it would appoint the ombudsman.

Other conditions for the FCC's approval included other Trump administration priorities, such as Paramount Skydance's commitment to end DEI programs.

In Skydance's July 22 letter, it cited the FCC's 2011 approval of Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal, as part of which Comcast agreed to an ombudsman for "preventing editorial bias" in the operation of the NBC broadcast network. The ombudsman, according to the 2011 FCC opinion, was originally put in place during a prior NBC merger in 1986, but Comcast would voluntarily keep the ombudsman "to further ensure that the policy of independence of NBCU's news operations would be maintained."

The FCC did not appoint the NBC ombudsman; instead it was a position filled by Comcast. At the time, the FCC noted that concerns over the ombudsman position included questions about whether Comcast could remove the ombudsman without cause and whether Comcast could increase or decrease the ombudsman's authority at will.

Jeff Shell, the president of Paramount Skydance Corp., was previously a CEO for NBCUniversal during Comcast's ownership.

Snopes reached out to both the FCC and Skydance seeking clarification on who would pick CBS' ombudsman. Neither responded before publishing and the story will be updated if we hear back from them.