A group of Paramount employees have accused the company of aligning itself with the genocide in Gaza after it condemned a boycott of the Israeli film industry.
The group of around 30 staff members wrote to the company's leadership last month accusing it of "blatant hypocrisy" in rejecting the boycott call and criticising its heavily pro-Israel programming.
"We refuse to have our labour used to endorse complicity in the brutalisation and erasure of an entire population," the Paramount Employees of Conscience wrote in a letter on 17 September.
It continued: "In condemning the Pledge, you are aligning yourselves with systems of apartheid, occupation, and what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Holocaust scholars, independent experts commissioned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, and countless other organisations, including Israeli institutions like B’Tselem, have recognized as a genocide in Gaza and of the Palestinian people."
On 8 September, pro-Palestine campaign group Film Workers for Palestine (FWP) appealed for a global boycott of the Israeli film industry in response to its genocidal assault on Gaza.
The call attracted support from more than 5,000 actors and directors, including A-listers such as Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman, Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton, and Andrew Garfield.
Paramount rejected the boycott and accused FWP of "silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality".
"As the parent company of a massive news organization in CBS, it is incredibly telling that Paramount chooses to say nothing as hundreds of journalists are targeted and murdered with impunity in Gaza while simultaneously publicly chastising film workers for choosing whom they would like to work with based on shared values," Paramount Employees of Conscience wrote in the letter.
It also criticised the company, noting it heavily skewed its programming towards Israel. The network has invested in one-sided stories such as We Will Dance Again, Children of Oct 7, and As1One without giving a platform to Palestinian perspectives.
The New Arab reached out to Paramount for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
In a second letter sent on 1 October, the group criticised the company for failing to acknowledge its concerns and called on it to highlight more Palestinian and Israel-critical Jewish voices in its programming.
It also urged the company to match its $1 million in donations to Israeli organisations in October 2023 with a similar donation to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, a charity that provides medical and humanitarian aid to children.
The media conglomerate was recently bought by David Ellison, son of the Trump-aligned billionaire Larry Ellison, who has close ties to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Following the $8 billion takeover, the pro-Israel journalist Bari Weiss has been installed as CBS News's editor-in-chief.
Weiss is the founder of The Free Press, a hardline Zionist publication that has defended Israel's genocide in Gaza and denied the existence of a famine.
The Ellison family is also lining up a takeover bid for Warner Bros, which owns a slew of media companies such as CNN and HBO.