Outside the Beltway

CBS News Hearts America

Should the news love anything as part of its mission statement?

Steven L. Taylor · Saturday, January 3, 2026 · 3 comments

So, CBS News has announced five simple values that it promises to live by.

The fourth is as follows:

This immediately struck me as inappropriate, but it took me a second to figure out an easy way to explain why: the news is not supposed to be a fan site. (Also, who is making people apologize for such things?)

To wit: if I want to read a solid and accurate analysis of the Dallas Cowboys, I want to read it from a person dedicated to reporting on sports who has knowledge of the game, or of player personnel management, or whatever might be the case. They may, or may not, have some sporting love in the back of their minds, but it shouldn’t be part of their mission statement. If I want to read a fan site, however, that’s not what I am getting.

For example, if I want an honest assessment of Dallas’ draft picks, I don’t want that analysis from either a homer or a hater.

Or if I want an analysis of the economic viability of additional Star Trek programming (or whatever thing I might love), I don’t want a fan’s perspective; I want actual news, information, and informed, expert analysis.

As a general matter, I operate from the general perspective that most Americans do, in fact, love their country, even if we don’t all do so in the same way. I assume that was true of most people working at CBS News before the recent sale of the network. But having that as part of an organizational mission statement is just weird and takes the focus off what should be the main goal.

Really, since CBS News is an organization that ostensibly exists to gather and report on the news, I don’t think it, as an entity, ought to have abstract feelings of love or patriotism. The notion that the US is “the last best hope on Earth” sounds more like someone is asking Obi-Wan Kenobi to help them out more than it does something I should be thinking about in regard to a news division.

I want a news organization to love truth and the ethical collection and distribution of facts and information, and the rest is for citizens to work out.

I don’t need, nor do I think it is appropriate, for a news organization to be emotionally vested in the subject about which it is reporting.

To me, this is just another signal that under Bari Weiss, CBS News is not really focused on being a news organization, but is instead set on an ideological pathway where real news is not the priority. In this way, it is not unlike the way her venture at the University of Austin was said to be some bold new, truth-telling machine, but was instead just a manifestation of a specific ideological perspective.

BTW, here are the other four “values.”

1. We work for you. (Except, no, let’s face facts: they work for Ellison and for the advertisers, that’s how this works).
2. We report on the world as it is. (No “weasel words,” it says–whatever that is supposed to mean).
3. We respect you. (Cool.)
4. We respect tradition, but we also believe in the future. (Which means they will be on broadcast and online–which seems to me to be less a “value” and more just that crazy little thing called “reality.”)