Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has allegedly accepted tickets worth at least $63,000 from CBS or its parent company, according to a new investigation published by ProPublica. Experts cited by the outlet said this is a potential ethics violation that could impact pending FCC decisions.
ProPublica said past disclosures show that Carr was among seven FCC commissioners who have accepted Kennedy gala tickets from CBS or its parent company (currently Paramount Skydance) over the last decade. He’s accepted tickets at least seven times since he was appointed during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2017, the outlet said.
“Federal ethics rules ban employees from taking gifts from any entity that does business with, is regulated by or seeks official action from their agency,” ProPublica noted. There are some exceptions, including the “widely attended gathering” allowance.
Virginia Canter, an expert cited by ProPublica who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House, Treasury Department, and Securities and Exchange Commission during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said it would be a “stretch” to consider the Kennedy Center gala would be included in that exemption. On the other hand, an FCC official familiar with the legal guidance given to the commissioners who was also cited by the outlet said the commissioners were told the event did meet the criteria.
“There’s no way that any top federal regulator should ever, ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect,” said Walter Shaub, who led the federal Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017, according to ProPublica. “The appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible. What’s at stake is nothing less than the public’s trust in government.”
In September 2024, the FCC faced a major decision in the form of CBS parent company Paramount’s request for a merger with Skydance Media, a company owned by David Ellison, son of Trump ally Larry Ellison. That October, the FCC launched an investigation of CBS after a conservative group complained about a “60 Minutes” interview with Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump also filed a lawsuit alleging the network deceptively edited the interview. Though CBS denied the accusation, it agreed to pay $16 million to settle the lawsuit, a move that ProPublica noted was criticized by legal experts.
After Trump won the 2024 election and declared he would appoint Carr as FCC chair, Carr accused CBS of biased election coverage. He also said it would be an obstacle to approving the Paramount-Skydance merger.
That December, Carr and three other commissioners accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from Paramount worth a combined $48,156. When the Paramount-Skydance merger was before the FCC, Carr demanded that Paramount appoint an independent ombudsperson who would evaluate claims of bias and the company also pledged to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives – a key issue for the Trump administration overall.
At the time of the FCC vote on the merger, there were only three commissioners out of the usual five. In addition to Carr, there was Commissioner Olivia Trusty, another Trump appointee, and Anna Gomez, an appointee of former President Joe Biden who was also one of the commissioners who accepted Kennedy Center Gala tickets from Paramount in December 2024. Carr and Trusty voted in favor of the merger and Gomez voted against it.
Shaub and the other experts cited by ProPublica said Carr and Gomez both should have abstained from the vote.
Fast forward to last year’s Kennedy Center gala. Trusty was at the event – ProPublica said she accepted tickets gifted by Paramount worth more than $12,000, citing ethics disclosure records it obtained. Carr was there too in seats that sold for $125,000 per ticket, per the ProPublica’s report. Gomez was not at the show.
“It’s unclear if Paramount gifted Carr the premium seats because the FCC has yet to make public his financial disclosure for last year,” ProPublica said.
At the time, Paramount was getting ready to present the FCC with yet another big decision, whether to approve a takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. If it does eventually go through, the merger would be a historic $110 billion consolidation of the five largest film studios in Hollywood, and its faced substantial pushback from within the industry and outside of it.
“More than 5,000 actors, producers and entertainment workers – including stars such as Robert De Niro, Javier Bardem, Joaquin Phoenix and Glenn Close – signed an open letter decrying how the consolidation would eliminate jobs and compromise “the integrity, independence, and diversity of our industry,” ProPublica noted. A lawsuit over the potential merger was filed just this week.
Warner Bros. Discovery was also considering a deal with Netflix, but Trump said on the night of the 2025 Kennedy Center gala that the deal could “be a problem.” That night, Carr sat with David Ellison in an exclusive skybox, said ProPublica.
“Hours after the gala ended, Paramount announced it was launching its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery,” and three months after that, Carr publicly endorsed Paramount over Netflix on CNBC, ProPublica said.
In the case that any of the three commissioners would have to recuse themselves and the panel would be unable to meet its three-commissioner quorum, Carr could decide to ask staff to approve the deal. He’s already bypassed a commission vote for the recent acquisition of Tegna by Nexstar Media Group.
“Neither Carr nor Trusty responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment,” said ProPublica. “Gomez said in a statement that she followed agency advice when she attended the event in 2023 and 2024. Her statement did not elaborate or otherwise address why taking gifts from Paramount did not pose a conflict of interest.”
Meanwhile, the FCC said in a statement that: “FCC Chairs and officials have attended the same event, in the same ways, consistently from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration to the Obama Administration.”
ProPublica’s review of 10 years of ethics disclosures found that commissioners accepted paid trips from various sponsors that Shaub, one of the experts coted by ProPublica, “called the justification outrageous,” said the outlet.
In 2009, the Office of Government Ethics memo gave federal employees the right to attend Kennedy Center events but explicitly said officials cannot accept free attendance “offered by persons other than the Kennedy Center and its trustees, officers and employees,” ProPublica reported. Then, in 2016, the ethics office further tightened its gift requirements.
A review of 10 years of disclosures shows commissioners accepted paid trips from various sponsors regulated by the FCC, including NBC Universal, ABC-Disney and Fox News. Still, ProPublica said CBS and its parent company provided the most.
“Melissa Zukerman, Paramount’s chief communications officer, said it was a decades-long ‘CBS practice to invite government officials from both parties’ to the Kennedy Center show. She didn’t address why the practice continued after new ownership took over last year, the purpose of the gifts or whether the tickets posed a conflict of interest,” ProPublica added.
In the past, Carr has criticized national networks for amassing “too much power,” and pushing “Hollywood & New York programming all over the country with no real checks.” He’s also said he’s willing to penalize media outlets that are “out of line.”
