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‘Below Deck’ Lawyering & A CBS News Culture War

News and notes on some timely industry legal spats, including a Bravo reality TV morass, a Stephen Miller–inspired D.E.I. complaint at CBS News, and a surprise copyright win for the “greatest fraternity rock song of all time.”

Stephen Miller
For the past year, CBS has been the target of a legal campaign claiming that its efforts to diversify its workforce amounted to discrimination against white men. The suits come courtesy of America First Legal Foundation, the conservative legal machine chaired by Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy advisor. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Eriq Gardner
May 6, 2025

Ever since the so-called “Reality Reckoning” of 2023, when Bethenny Frankel and a few fellow Bravo-verse insurgents decided that tequila-fueled humiliation should come with worker protections, NBCUniversal and its unscripted partners have drawn from a familiar arsenal of corporate containment. They’ve denied that reality stars are employees, and funneled complaints into the black hole of arbitration. And when things have gotten truly messy, they’ve unsheathed the First Amendment like a saber, defending their constitutional right to cast whomever they like and ply them with unlimited booze.