Apple’s Journal app doesn’t promise to improve mental health, but its approach to reflective writing closely aligns with what decades of psychological research actually supports. Here’s why that matters, and how Apple’s approach differs from most wellness apps.

Journal focuses on people’s thoughts and experiences instead of their bodies, unlike the data-driven health tracking with Apple Watch. The app encourages users to reflect on their emotions and pay closer attention to the everyday moments that shape their lives.

Instead of evaluating users or assigning psychological scores, Apple designed Journal as a private place for writing and memory. People can use it to revisit meaningful moments and build a habit of reflection over time.

Apple’s decision to prioritize writing over interpretation aligns with decades of research showing that expressive writing can produce measurable psychological benefits (Frattaroli, 2006; Reinhold et al., 2018). Journal encourages reflection without trying to explain what users think or how they should feel.

Apple has never described Journal as a treatment for depression, anxiety, or any other mental health condition. Researchers also haven’t conducted clinical trials evaluating Apple’s implementation, so no one can honestly claim the app itself improves mental health.

The strongest evidence comes from research on expressive writing, gratitude interventions, autobiographical memory, habit formation, and emotional self-monitoring (Frattaroli, 2006; Sohal et al., 2022). Many wellness apps make mental health claims that go beyond the available evidence.

Apple has taken a more restrained approach with Journal. The company presents the app as a tool for reflection, which is consistent with what current research supports.

Mindfulness doesn’t always begin with meditation

Meditation has become closely associated with mindfulness for stress management and emotional distress. Mindfulness, however, includes paying closer attention to thoughts, emotions, and everyday experiences.

Reflective writing develops that awareness by encouraging people to revisit experiences and examine their emotional reactions. Journaling asks people to think about experiences they’ve already lived.

A difficult conversation, an afternoon hike, dinner with friends, or an ordinary Tuesday can all become opportunities to pause and consider what happened instead of immediately moving on to the next task.

Reflective journaling also asks different questions than a traditional diary, which usually records the events of the day. The practice focuses on why those events mattered, why someone reacted a certain way, or what can be learned from the experience.

Researchers generally agree that intentional reflective writing provides greater psychological value than simply documenting daily activities. The benefits are usually modest and vary considerably from person to person (Frattaroli, 2006; Reinhold et al., 2018).

Journal’s writing prompts reinforce that approach without making the experience feel like homework. The app’s widget suggests topics such as gratitude, kindness, purpose, and meaningful moments instead of asking users to list everything they did that day. Reflection prompts are one of the app’s primary ways of encouraging that habit.

Writing is still Journal’s most powerful feature

Psychologists have studied expressive writing for decades by asking participants to write privately about emotionally meaningful experiences over multiple sessions.

Individual studies have reached different conclusions. Large reviews have still found a consistent pattern across the research (Frattaroli, 2006; Reinhold et al., 2018).

People who write thoughtfully and repeatedly often report small improvements in psychological well-being compared with people who don’t write at all. The benefits appear consistently enough to support reflective writing as a useful mental wellness practice.

The limits of expressive writing are as important as its potential benefits. Researchers don’t consider expressive writing a treatment for depression or anxiety, and they don’t recommend replacing professional care with journaling alone (Reinhold et al., 2018).

Writing about emotionally difficult experiences can temporarily increase distress before those experiences become easier to process. Research also suggests that structured writing exercises usually produce better results than completely open-ended journaling.

Regular practice appears more helpful than writing only during periods of overwhelming stress (Reinhold et al., 2018; Smyth et al., 2018). Apple doesn’t require users to follow a structured writing program, but Journal encourages several habits that researchers have linked to better outcomes.

Reflection prompts reduce the pressure of facing a blank page, suggested moments highlight experiences with emotional significance, and reminders make it easier to return to the app consistently.

Apple doesn’t tell users what conclusions they should reach. Journal focuses on removing common barriers that make reflective writing harder to maintain.

Consistency may be Journal’s most important design goal. Most people don’t abandon journaling because they dislike writing.

Often, people stop because they don’t know what to write about, they forget to open the app, or the effort required to get started outweighs the habit. Apple addresses each of those problems by making reflection easier to begin rather than trying to make journaling more entertaining.

Journal Suggestions may be Apple’s smartest design decision

Opening a blank page can feel surprisingly intimidating. Even people who enjoy writing often struggle to decide whether an experience is interesting enough to record.

Journal Suggestions solve that problem by shifting the question. Instead of asking users to invent something worth writing about, the app surfaces experiences that have already happened.

Psychologists have long understood that autobiographical memory depends heavily on cues. People rarely retrieve memories in chronological order like scrolling through a timeline (Crane et al., 2007).

Journaling Suggestions

A photograph can suddenly bring back details that seemed forgotten. A familiar song can transport someone to a particular afternoon years earlier. Walking past a familiar location often recalls conversations, emotions, and experiences connected to that place.

Apple appears to have designed Journal around that understanding of memory. Journal Suggestions don’t preserve memories more accurately or strengthen memory itself, and the research doesn’t support making claims that broad.

Presenting those moments changes how the journaling experience feels. Journal brings meaningful experiences back to users instead of asking them to search for something to write about.

Apple extends that philosophy throughout the rest of the app. Users can begin an entry on their iPhones, attach photos, voice recordings, and locations without switching between apps, and continue writing later on an iPad or Mac.

None of those features change the psychology behind reflection. Each one removes another small barrier between living an experience and thinking about what that experience meant.

Health adds context without trying to explain everything

Journal becomes even more interesting when viewed alongside Apple’s Health app. Users can choose to log a state of mind while writing and automatically record time spent journaling as mindful minutes.

Health then places those entries alongside sleep, exercise, daylight exposure, and other health information. Apple’s decision to separate those responsibilities between two apps deserves attention.

Journal captures experiences while they’re still fresh. Health organizes information over weeks and months, allowing trends to emerge naturally instead of interrupting the writing process with charts and graphs.

The separation keeps Journal focused on reflection while allowing Health to remain the place where patterns become visible.

Researchers generally consider emotional self-monitoring a useful practice when used thoughtfully. Recording moods over time can reveal recurring stressors and show how daily habits affect emotional well-being (Wright et al., 2025).

Using the Mental Wellbeing feature

Mood records can also make conversations with healthcare providers more productive because people don’t have to rely entirely on memory. Several weeks of entries often reveal patterns that are difficult to recognize one day at a time.

Mood tracking also has limitations, and Apple deserves credit for avoiding some of the most common pitfalls. Research has found that repeatedly monitoring emotions without a clear purpose can make ordinary emotional fluctuations feel more significant than they really are (Wright et al., 2025).

Some wellness apps respond by generating scores, interpretations, or personalized advice that imply a level of certainty the underlying data can’t support. Apple takes a more restrained approach.

State of Mind entries remain optional, and Health presents relationships rather than explanations. Someone may notice that poor sleep often coincides with lower mood or that regular exercise tends to accompany more positive days.

Health doesn’t claim one caused the other, and Journal doesn’t attempt to interpret those observations. Apple gives users information while leaving the conclusions to them.

Privacy encourages honest reflection

Journaling only works when people feel comfortable writing honestly. Self-reflection becomes much more difficult when people worry that deeply personal thoughts could become advertising data, appear on social media, or be accessed by someone else.

Apple built Journal around keeping personal reflections private. Journal Suggestions are generated using on-device intelligence instead of sending personal context to Apple’s servers for analysis.

Users also decide whether Journal can access Health data, choose what information appears in entries, and can lock the app with Face ID, Touch ID, or a device passcode.

Apple also protects Journal entries stored in iCloud with end-to-end encryption. As long as users enable two-factor authentication and secure their devices with a passcode, only their trusted devices hold the keys needed to decrypt journal entries.

Journal entries stored in iCloud remain end-to-end encrypted even when Advanced Data Protection is turned off.

Privacy alone doesn’t make journaling effective, but it can remove an important obstacle. Research on expressive writing consistently suggests that people are more willing to explore difficult thoughts and emotions when they believe their writing will remain confidential (Frattaroli, 2006).

Apple’s privacy model supports that process by making personal reflection feel like a conversation with yourself.

Consistency matters more than perfection

One of the clearest findings across habit research is that consistency usually matters more than intensity. Habits become part of daily life because repeating the same behavior gradually requires less conscious effort (Lally et al., 2010).

Journal reflects that understanding in dozens of small ways. Reminders encourage people to return at regular times, and suggested moments eliminate the pressure of finding something worth writing about.

The research also suggests people don’t need to write pages every night to benefit from reflection. Spending five or ten minutes thinking carefully about one meaningful experience is often easier to sustain than waiting for inspiration to produce a long journal entry (Smyth et al., 2018).

Pairing journaling with an existing routine, such as finishing dinner or plugging in an iPhone before bed, may also help reflection become part of everyday life instead of another goal competing for attention.

Looking back through older entries can be just as valuable as writing new ones. Individual entries often feel ordinary while they’re being written. Weeks or months of consistent reflection can reveal recurring themes that are difficult to notice in the moment.

Small sources of stress, recurring moments of gratitude, changing priorities, and gradual personal growth become much easier to recognize once enough experiences have accumulated on the page.

Journal doesn’t introduce a new theory of mental wellness. Apple built the app around well-established psychological principles and removed as much friction as possible from the act of reflection.

Journal provides insights on your journey

Reflective writing, expressed gratitude, habit formation, and self-monitoring can all make modest contributions to everyday well-being.

People stop because life gets busy, blank pages become intimidating, and habits quietly disappear. Journal addresses those problems with thoughtful design instead of exaggerated promises.

Journal’s greatest achievement may be its restraint. Rather than trying to convince people they need another wellness platform, Apple built software that steps aside and lets one of psychology’s oldest reflective practices become part of everyday life.

How Journal became my external memory

Research explains why reflective writing can be valuable, but one idea changed how I think about journaling. I stopped treating journaling as a diary and started thinking of it as an external brain.

I’ve been journaling through various apps since 2013, and it has become “A History of Andrew Thus Far.” I record interesting dreams, write down memories when one randomly pops into my head, and save photos and videos of memorable events.

Earlier in 2026, I started thinking about journaling differently. Instead of treating a journal entry as one long Captain’s Log of each day’s events, I began treating it like a personal social network.

I write multiple short entries a day, even if it’s one sentence, such as a joke I thought of or an insight into myself. Memory is fallible and I’ve learned of “cognitive offloading” in which a journal becomes an external archive.

My grandpa suffered from Alzheimer’s disease before he passed away, although I was too young to remember him much. Journaling, and apps like Reminders, are alternatives to posting sticky notes around my apartment so that I don’t forget important things.

Another aspect of journaling is thinking more about myself through time. Past Andrew, Present Andrew, and Future Andrew are part of a continuum. Present Andrew learns from Past Andrew to make sure that Future Andrew will be a good person.

Journaling helps me do that, and the wonderful thing about using an app is the ability to search through memories.

I hope that Apple creates a “On This Day” widget that surfaces old entries so that I can be reminded and even update past entries with current thoughts and experiences.

People may never read my journal, or maybe someday I’ll print it out at the end of my life. Journaling is a way to let the universe know that I was here, that I was able to exist.

References

There’s a lot that went into the research and use of this piece. In-line links didn’t seem appropriate in this case. Here’s what I’ve used over the years while developing my program, habits, and mindfulness.

Crane, C., Barnhofer, T., Visser, C., Nightingale, H., & Williams, J. M. G. (2007). Cue self-relevance affects autobiographical memory specificity in individuals with a history of major depression. Memory, 15(3), 312-323.

Cregg, D. R., & Cheavens, J. S. (2021). Gratitude interventions: Effective self-help? A meta-analysis of the impact on symptoms of depression and anxiety. Journal of Happiness Studies, 22(1), 413-445.

Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823-865.

Kirca, M., Yldrm, M., & Bakrcolu, R. (2023). Expressed gratitude interventions: A meta-analysis. Journal of Well-Being Assessment, 7, 207-233.

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009.

Reinhold, M., Brkner, P.-C., & Holling, H. (2018). Effects of expressive writing on depressive symptoms: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 25(1), e12224.

Smyth, J. M., Johnson, J. A., Auer, B. J., Lehman, E., Talamo, G., & Sciamanna, C. N. (2018). Online positive affect journaling in the improvement of mental distress and well-being in general medical patients with elevated anxiety symptoms: A preliminary randomized controlled trial. JMIR Mental Health, 5(4), e11290.

Sohal, M., Singh, P., Dhillon, B. S., & Gill, H. S. (2022). Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Family Medicine and Community Health, 10(1), e001154.

Wright, L. A., Majid, M., Shajan, G., Momoh, G., Patil, R., Rawsthorne, M., Purewal, D., Patel, S., & Morriss, R. (2025). The user experience of ambulatory assessment and mood monitoring in depression: A systematic review and meta-synthesis. npj Digital Medicine, 8, 737.

Few companies turn flagship phones into objects that belong in a display case as much as on a desk. Caviar has spent years refining that balance, and its newest Legends collection takes the approach one step further by centering two of the most recognizable names in football. Timed with the close of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the collection marks what many expect to be the final major international chapter for Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Instead of normal run-of-the-mill products, Caviar created a pair of exceptionally rare handsets that combined the latest smartphones with hand-finished enamel artwork and extensive gold plating. The Messi edition is based on Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra model. The regular rear side is replaced with a detailed portrait of the Argentine captain done in cloisonne enamel in the national team’s white and sky-blue colors, which were chosen for national pride. The jersey number 10, national emblems, and edges of the entire artwork are all fully plated with 24-karat gold. The phone’s frame is likewise encased in matching gold, and just 19 will be created.

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• BUILDABLE LIONEL MESSI-FIGURE – Construct a highly detailed model of Lionel Messi that can be displayed pointing towards the sky in his signature…

The Ronaldo edition begins with the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max as the foundation. You get a cloisonne enamel portrait in the Portuguese national team’s classic red and green colors. The design features Ronaldo’s trademark number 7, the Portuguese coat of arms, and a background with strict, upward lines. The frame and artwork’s distinguishing forms are accented with 24-karat gold plating. It will also be limited to exactly 19 units, like the Messi edition.

Both phones retain all of the normal functions of their base versions. The customization occurs only on the outside, where the enamel and gold transform each smartphone into a portable, or more accurately, carryable piece of commemorative art rather than a normal everyday phone. Caviar doesn’t just give you the phone as part of the package. Along with the handset, you get specially branded packaging, a gold-plated key, a Caviar coin, and a multi-level certificate of authenticity, giving the whole affair some considerable weight. You also get a one-year warranty, and they accept custom orders, which include engraving your initials or logos on the side, modifying the artwork, or even swapping out the materials.

The Ronaldo iPhone 17 Pro with 256GB costs $11,410. The Messi Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra starts at $13,130 for the same storage capacity. Those figures represent the level of craftsmanship that has gone into each and every one of these handsets, the quality of the gold plating, and the fact that you will be one of just 19 people to own any of these limited edition smartphones.
[Source]

from the give-em-an-inch-and-they’ll-take-a-panopticon dept

This is probably nothing more than another data point in a deluge, but it’s worth pointing out because it’s instructive.

Cops are using a whole lot of surveillance tech these days. Flock Safety has been especially aggressive in pursuing the law enforcement market, offering cops access to a nationwide network of cameras, including many owned and operated by private citizens.

Flock — and its law enforcement partners — have generated a lot of negative press over the last couple of years. Some of this is due to cops abusing their access and/or performing searches for federal agencies that aren’t allowed to directly access Flock’s database. Some of this is due to Flock itself, which has seen the negative press and largely chosen to ignore it.

But now Flock has real problems. Federal legislators are demanding answers to uncomfortable questions. And dozens of cities are attempting to rid themselves of Flock cameras following public outcry and/or evidence of abuse by those with access.

In San Francisco, it’s a blend of both. And the answers/excuses made by Flock and the SFPD make it clear law enforcement agencies cannot be trusted with the tech they now have easy access to.

“During a routine compliance audit in May, SFPD officials found that the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) had queried SFPD’s Flock network on behalf of federal and out-of-state agencies. There were 299 improper inquiries over approximately one year, which accounts for 0.005% of inquiries over that period,” the release states.

Each of these searches performed on behalf of federal agencies broke state law. To its credit, the SFPD pulled the plug on access following the results of this audit. And while that’s the sort of response we’d like to see from more law enforcement agencies, the statements issued by those involved (SFPD, Flock) make it clear the only way to prevent abuse is to never allow cops to have access to this tech in the first place.

Here’s what Flock Safety had to say about the audit results:

A Flock spokesperson in February said the company had disabled its national lookup feature for all California agencies and is confident its privacy protections comply with state law, local policy and community expectations.

[…]

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In response to the San Francisco audit, Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel told KTVU that the searches were not a result of a software malfunction, platform issue, unauthorized access, or any failure of the Flock system.

Without more information, it’s impossible to tell whether the first statement issued by Flock (in response to a lawsuit) is true. It could be that feds asked the SFPD to perform local searches, which would lend credence to Flock’s initial statement. The fact that 299 potentially illegal searches took place over the last year doesn’t generate a whole lot of confidence in either the supply or demand side of the Flock equation.

The second statement makes things a bit more clear: this wasn’t SFPD officers going outside of any limitations imposed by Flock or the department itself. Instead, they broke the law by running searches they most likely knew violated state regulations. In other words, this wasn’t Flock enabling lawlessness. This was cops working within the system to violate the law.

The implication gets even stronger now that the SFPD has issued its own statement. This appears to have been officers breaking the law, rather than the law being (accidentally or otherwise) bypassed because the software wasn’t configured correctly.

The San Francisco Police Department identified the activity through a routine audit of its own Flock network and took immediate action, Lewbel noted. 

He added that no out-of-state or federal agencies had direct access to SFPD’s Flock system or any California Flock system. 

The first sentence means something. The second sentence, however, is meaningless. The limitations placed on access by Flock and SFPD policies were circumvented to perform exactly the sort of searches they were meant to prevent. This audit could have come back completely clean if SFPD officers hadn’t decided to break the rules.

And even if 299 illegal searches are only “0.005%” of the total number of searches, that doesn’t mean the other 99.995% of searches were justified. Most people assume ALPR databases are only accessed when a license plate generates a hit due to prior placement on a watch list. That’s an false impression that’s been perpetrated for years by law enforcement, which constantly claims these are used to track down car thieves, kidnappers, bank robbers, and other dangerous criminals.

But when audits are only looking for searches that route around parameters, they don’t see all the searches being made by cops who are bored or are tracking their exes or trying to hunt down women who are doing nothing more than seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies. The “0.005% of searches” assertion is likely misleading as well. Plaintiffs suing the state over its ALPR use alleged more than 1.6 million illegal searches during the same time period across the state. Not only that, but the number of total searches is likely inflated by those triggered by the system itself, which involve minimal interaction by officers utilizing the ALPR network.

On one hand, if we decide Flock is actually telling the truth this time, the blame lies with the officers who choose to break the rules and the law. On the other hand, if Flock’s representation of the facts is inaccurate, it only means cops who knew what the law was chose to break it simply because they easily could. Neither of these scenarios add up to the SFPD being trustworthy. And splitting the difference just means we can’t trust the SFPD’s camera provider either.

Filed Under: alpr, license plate readers, location tracking, san francisco, san francisco police, surveillance

Companies: flock safety

from the the-appearance-of-a-conflict-is-a-conflict dept

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

The rich and famous who filed into the Kennedy Center’s opera house in December were there to enjoy one of the nation’s most exclusive celebrations of the performing arts: the center’s annual honors gala.

The black-tie event, hosted by President Donald Trump, prioritized tickets to people who donated more than $75,000 to the center. This year, it feted Hollywood icon Sylvester Stallone, the legendary glam rock band Kiss and the Grammy Award-winning disco pioneer Gloria Gaynor.

Among the attendees that evening were two lower-profile government officials whose regulatory decisions had been crucial to the future of the gala’s broadcast sponsor, CBS, and its parent company, Paramount.

Five months earlier, Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty cast a decisive vote approving Paramount’s historic $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. Now, the commissioner and a guest enjoyed the star-studded celebration thanks to tickets gifted to her by Paramount worth more than $12,000, according to ethics disclosure records obtained by ProPublica.

The other commissioner who approved the merger watched from a prized perch. FCC Chair Brendan Carr and his wife sat in a private skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other executives from Paramount and CBS. Such seats sold for $125,000 a ticket, according to Kennedy Center guidelines.

It’s unclear if Paramount gifted Carr the premium seats because the FCC has yet to make public his financial disclosure for last year.

However, past disclosures show Carr and Trusty are among seven FCC commissioners who have accepted Kennedy gala tickets from CBS or its parent company over the last decade. Ethics experts told ProPublica this poses a blatant conflict of interest since the commission regulates the network. Carr’s previous financial statements show he has accepted tickets at least seven times since his 2017 appointment, totaling over $63,000 in gifts.

Last December’s ceremony attended by Trusty and Carr took place as Paramount was launching a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, a move that would later result in a merger agreement that requires FCC approval.

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.

Four ethics experts told ProPublica that by accepting the premium tickets Trusty and Carr compromised the FCC’s impartiality and should not take part in any upcoming decision on the merger.

“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. “The appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible. What’s at stake is nothing less than the public’s trust in government.”

Virginia Canter, 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 the commissioners who accepted tickets cannot participate in this matter without damaging the integrity of the government’s decision-making process.

“This is shocking. Pretty disturbing, that’s what I would say. I just don’t understand what they were thinking,” said Canter, who now works as chief counsel for ethics and corruption at the nonpartisan government watchdog group Democracy Defenders Fund.

The FCC’s review of the merger is one of the final hurdles facing a historic $110 billion consolidation of two of the five largest film studios in Hollywood. The deal would unite Paramount Skydance with Warner Bros., bringing under the control of one company Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services; CBS and CNN; and scores of other major broadcast channels, cable networks, and digital platforms.

The new megacorporation, which could reshape how millions will access news, movies, sports and video games, faces fierce opposition from inside and outside Hollywood. 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.”

On Monday, California, New York and 10 other Democratic states filed a lawsuit seeking to block the merger under federal and state anti-monopoly laws.

American and international regulators are evaluating the deal for its potential national security implications and impacts to consumers worldwide. Last week, the British government signaled it planned to investigate whether the new entertainment titan that would emerge from the union would unfairly stifle competition. The FCC’s ongoing review includes examining the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds backing the deal, including from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The FCC usually has five commissioners — all appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve five-year terms — but the agency currently has only three. Any vote by the full commission would likely be decided by Republicans Carr and Trusty over Democrat Anna Gomez. Gomez was not at the December 2025 show but has accepted tickets from Paramount in the past. Because the FCC requires a three-commissioner quorum for a vote, any recusal could leave the panel unable to decide on the merger. Carr could decide to ask staff to approve the deal rather than bring it to a commission vote, but the ethics experts said he should recuse himself from any decisions affecting the Paramount merger.

The experts warned the commissioners’ gifts might become central in legal challenges and said the Justice Department should investigate potential violations of federal rules or laws.

Neither Carr nor Trusty responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment. 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.

An FCC spokesperson said agency ethics officers have for years cleared commissioner appearances, finding it consistent with ethics law.

“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,” the FCC said in a statement. “There has been no change in recent years.”

Shaub called the justification outrageous.

“It’s no excuse to say that you took the gift because everyone else was doing it or that your agency has had a bad habit of indulging in gift taking for a long time,” Shaub said. “That kind of explanation doesn’t work for school children, and it sure as hell doesn’t work for government officials who are supposed to have better judgment than a fifth grader.”

Despite their oversight role, FCC members have long enjoyed a night out at the Kennedy Center courtesy of CBS or its parent company. Seven of the 10 commissioners who served since 2016 accepted tickets worth more than $260,000, according to a ProPublica analysis of ethics disclosures.

Carr’s predecessor, Jessica Rosenworcel, who was appointed FCC chair by President Joe Biden and stepped down in January 2025, attended regularly.

Rosenworcel and several other former commissioners who accepted the tickets did not respond to requests for comment. The one commissioner who didn’t accept a single gift, Nathan Simington, said he received the Kennedy Center invites from CBS and Paramount but turned them down because it “wasn’t my cup of tea.”

A review of 10 years of disclosures shows commissioners accepted paid trips from various sponsors to appear at banquets and speak at conferences. Some of those gifts came from other media companies regulated by the FCC. NBCUniversal, ABC-Disney and Fox News, for instance, paid for commissioners to attend White House Correspondents’ Association dinners, records show. The total value of the combined gifts topped $308,000. But the vast majority came from CBS and its parent company.

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.

Carr, who joined the FCC as a staffer in 2012 and rose to become the agency’s general counsel, was appointed to serve as a commissioner by Trump during his first term. Since then, Carr has accepted tickets annually, except when the 2020 event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to his public disclosures.

Carr did not respond to an email request from ProPublica for his latest ethics report, which would indicate whether Paramount also paid for him to attend last December’s gala. The FCC referred us to the Office of Government Ethics, which told us that the FCC had not yet provided the disclosure. The FCC did not respond to our subsequent requests for the record.

A 2009 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.” In 2016, the ethics office tightened its gift requirements, warning officials to avoid any appearance “of loss of impartiality.”

There is an exemption to the gift rules that allows free entry to gatherings that are widely attended and paid for by third parties, but only if certain conditions are met.

The event must “further agency programs or operations,” and the agency’s interest in an official attending must outweigh “concern that the employee may be, or may appear to be, improperly influenced in the performance of official duties,” according to the federal rules.

As an example, the Office of Government Ethics said an industry-wide seminar attended by more than 100 people could be allowed if the employee’s participation would be in the agency’s interest. But those attending should “represent a range of persons interested in a given matter” and the event must provide a “structured opportunity” to exchange ideas and views among invitees.

The office clarified in a 2007 memo that performing arts presentations would not count even if they, like the honors gala, have a reception before or afterward at which officials can mingle with other attendees.

Canter, the former White House ethics lawyer, said it would be a “stretch” for the FCC to argue the exemptions apply to the Kennedy Center’s annual show, where famous musicians perform and celebrities laud those who are being honored. “It’s not what we would consider a widely attended gathering,” she said.

Kedric Payne, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, noted that federal rules also require agencies to weigh the market value of the attendance, its relevance to the agency, any sensitive pending matters involving the donor and whether accepting free tickets creates an appearance of preferential treatment.

“The ethics rules are designed to prevent this exact situation,” he said, adding that it is an “obvious conflict of interest” for an official to “accept expensive gifts from anyone with decisions pending before the agency. This matters because it makes the public question whether official decisions are free from the improper influence of wealthy special interests.”

An FCC official familiar with the legal guidance given to the commissioners said they were told the event met the criteria for the “widely attended gathering” exception. (The source was not authorized to talk publicly about agency legal discussions.)

Shaub, the former Office of Government Ethics head, disagreed, saying it would be “hard to understand what compelling interest the FCC could think it had in letting its commissioners” attend the gala.

“What possible reason could have outweighed the obvious ethics concerns?” he asked.

Federal rules require written authorization for an official to accept free entry to a widely attended gathering. The FCC did not respond to our requests to provide the authorizations for the Paramount tickets or say who authorized them. Two senior ethics officials at the agency, Kathleen Fulp and Lauren Northrop, did not respond to requests for comment.

While December’s event came at a particularly sensitive time for Paramount and the FCC, it wasn’t the first.

More than a year earlier, in September 2024, Paramount had filed paperwork seeking the commission’s approval for its merger with Skydance Media. A month later, the FCC launched an investigation of CBS after a conservative group complained about a “60 Minutes” interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump later filed a lawsuit alleging the network deceptively edited the interview — an accusation CBS denied.

Then in November, less than two weeks after his election victory, Trump declared he would appoint Carr as FCC chair. Almost immediately, Carr accused CBS of biased election coverage and said it would be an obstacle to approving the Paramount-Skydance merger.

That December, Carr and three other commissioners — Rosenworcel, Gomez and Geoffrey Starks — accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from Paramount worth a combined $48,156.

On Jan. 16, 2025, just days before Rosenworcel stepped down from the commission, she announced the agency was dismissing the election complaint against CBS. She and Gomez called the outcome a victory for the First Amendment.

But days later, Carr, the incoming FCC chair, reopened the investigation.

To resolve Trump’s lawsuit, CBS agreed to pay the president $16 million, a decision criticized by legal experts who decried Trump’s claims as baseless.

Two days after Trump posted on social media that he had received the settlement money, the FCC took up the Paramount-Skydance merger. To meet Carr’s demands, Paramount agreed to appoint an independent ombudsperson who would evaluate claims of bias. The company also pledged to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

By then, Starks and Simington had unexpectedly stepped down from the commission. Trusty, a Trump appointee, had been confirmed by the Senate the previous month.

Trusty and Carr voted in favor of the merger. Gomez voted against, blasting the approval for requiring “never-before-seen forms of government control over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment.”

Experts said that while Trusty had no conflict yet, Carr and Gomez did. The fact that Gomez voted against Paramount did not mean she didn’t face a conflict under the rules, Shaub said.

Federal rules only require those who accept improper gifts to make a prompt reimbursement, but Shaub and the other experts said Carr and Gomez should have abstained from the vote.

“If you repay the face value of the ticket, the gift rules don’t require you to recuse — though common sense and any kind of conscience might lead you to recuse voluntarily for the good of the country,” Shaub said. “But if you refuse to repay the donor, I don’t see how anything short of recusal could remotely remediate the problem.”

With the Paramount-Skydance merger greenlit by the FCC, Ellison, the new company’s CEO, then set his sights on acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery.

Warner at first rebuffed Paramount’s overtures and on Dec. 5 — two days before the Kennedy Center gala — accepted a bid from Netflix to buy its studio and streaming assets. Ellison responded by making numerous calls to administration officials and had a long talk with Trump, according to The Wall Street Journal.

On the night of the gala, Trump told reporters the Netflix deal “could be a problem” and that he planned to get directly involved with the regulatory approval. Inside the Kennedy Center, Carr and his wife sat with Ellison in an exclusive skybox, Bloomberg reported. (Gomez said in her statement to ProPublica that she declined Paramount’s “invitation because of serious concerns about press independence connected to conditions Paramount agreed to as part of its merger transaction before the FCC.”)

Hours after the gala ended, Paramount announced it was launching its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery.

About three months later, Carr publicly endorsed Paramount over Netflix on CNBC, promising swift approval.

If one or more commissioners choose to abstain from a merger vote because of ethical concerns, what would happen next is unclear. Under federal conflict of interest rules, an agency designee could theoretically permit commissioners to vote after considering several factors, including “the difficulty of reassigning the matter,” the nature of the relationship between the commissioners and Paramount, and the “effect that resolution of the matter would have upon the financial interests” of the firm.

Carr could bypass a full commission vote entirely, as he did with the recent acquisition of Tegna by Nexstar Media Group. In that case, Carr delegated authority to FCC staff to approve the takeover.

But any decision on the Paramount deal — whether by the full commission or by staff at the direction of the chair — is likely to be challenged.

Richard Painter, a former White House ethics attorney in the administration of George W. Bush, said while courts often defer to the government’s judgment, they also can become skeptical if a regulatory agency is shown to have violated ethics rules.

“A judge may very well say that the merger decision of the FCC isn’t worth jack because the process was corrupted,” he said.

Filed Under: anna gomez, brendan carr, conflict of interest, david ellison, disclosure, ethics, fcc, jessica rosenworcel, kennedy center, nathan simington, olivia trusty

Companies: paramount