Korean Mogul Accuses Bryon Allen Of Unfairly Securing Deal In Racial Discrimination Lawsuit
Byron Allen has been name-dropped in media mogul Soo Kim’s racial discrimination lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Filed on Wednesday (April 24), Kim accused the FCC of derailing an $8.6 billion deal to purchase Tegna Inc. According to his claims, he wasn’t the “right type of minority” to fulfill the FCC’s diversity goals.
Per its official website, Tegna is “a media company innovating in the digital age [with the] purpose to serve the greater good of our communities through empowering stories, impactful investigations and innovative marketing services.”
“I am suing the FCC because they need to be held accountable for racially discriminating against me. The disparate and unfair treatment in my case is undeniable and unnecessarily divisive. Every person appearing before the FCC deserves to be treated equitably,” Kim explained to Fox News Digital.
The disgruntled CEO alleged that “the FCC killed the deal motivated by the belief that Mr. Allen’s Black-owned company deserved greater solicitude than [his] Asian American-owned company.”
Kim and his company, Standard General, won a public bidding auction to buy Tegna in 2022. He reportedly planned to hire a female chief executive, resulting in “a historic leap forward for both minority ownership and female leadership of broadcast stations” until the FCC cancelled the deal in favor of Allen.
“The FCC makes no secret about the role race plays in its decisions. Race is a factor in deciding whether to approve broadcast license transfers. The FCC tracks broadcast ownership by the race of broadcast owners,” Kim’s lawyers wrote in the 120-page complaint, later claiming that the FCC recently reported to Congress that “advancing equity” was pivotal to its policymaking decisions.
“Race was a negative for Korean American Soo Kim, but it always seemed to work as a positive for Byron Allen,” the complaint continued before labeling Allen and his company as “the right kind of diversity.”
“As far as the FCC’s diversity policies and practices were concerned, being Asian did not count. Mr. Kim’s race was used against him with pernicious stereotypes,” Kim’s lawyers added.
Overall, Kim and his legal team feel the FCC violated “the twin commands” of the U.S. Constitution’s equality guarantee that states “race may never be used as a ‘negative’ and that it may not operate as a stereotype.” Kim claims to have been seen as a “shadowy foreign investor.”
Kim also accused the FCC of shelving the deal without notice and is seeking “punitive damages to the fullest extent permitted by law,” plus attorneys’ fees and a jury trial.
In 2021, The New York Post reported that the $8 billion Tegna deal included a chain of 64 TV and radio stations that span more than 50 markets across the US. It’d give Allen leverage to sell several of his underdeveloped networks and alleviate his debt.
This all came one week before TheGrio—which is owned by Allen—laid off all members of its podcast and video team, including one managing editor. Regarding the layoffs, Allen Media Group issued a statement that detailed how it’s “making strategic changes to better position the company for growth that will result in expense and workforce reductions across all divisions,” but didn’t specify if more layoffs were coming.
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