"On too many stories, the press has missed the story. Because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you."

That changes now. The new CBS Evening News… pic.twitter.com/NKdvRJjYCS

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 1, 2026

CBS, like ABC, NBC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, has allowed political agendas and unprofessional practices, not to mention laziness and bias, to make broadcast journalism untrustworthy, corrupt and destructive to a well-functioning democracy for decades. Now, after New York Times rebel Bari Weiss has been installed by the network’s new owners to restore balance, fairness, objectivity and competence to CBS News, once the gold standard for TV news reporting (or so we thought), CBS is promising a reset. That would mean a good faith attempt to return to ethical journalism.

Do you believe it? There are good reasons to be dubious, and that statement, which was presumably drafted with some care, is one of them:

• I don’t see what “perspectives” have to do with accurate news reporting. That phrasing is deliberately mealy-mouthed: what CBS should admit is that its news has been too often designed to advance progressive, Democratic and anti-Republican agendas. The objective should be factual reporting, not pandering to anyone’s “perspectives.” The perspectives of average Americans are too often based on bias and ignorance. 
• There is nothing wrong with placing appropriate “weight” on the analysis of experts if unbiased and objective experts are presented, legitimate opposing expert views are acknowledged, and agenda-driven academics are not allowed to present themselves as neutral observers. No weight should be placed on pure, unsupported opinions from the largely uninformed public (“you”) other than the conclusion, “a lot of people think this way.”
• It has yet to be demonstrated to my satisfaction that a majority of Americans want honest reporting that challenges the biases and assumptions in their social bubbles. I continue to be astounded that so many of my friends and relatives who I know have well-developed critical thinking skills continue to rely on MSNBC, which has been a pure leftist propaganda service for more than a decade now, or who appear to be unable to acknowledge the throbbing, pulsating, partisan bias of the Washington Post, NPR and PBS. My experience at Ethics Alarms is that most people want their biases confirmed, not challenged. Right now, there is no balanced, fair, and objective news source. If Fox News gets the MAGA and conservative viewers who refuse to accept the validity of inconvenient truths, and the Angry Left flocks to the rest of the news sources, business considerations at CBS will eventually stomp out ethical ones. 
• As for “independents,” I am beginning to suspect that most of those are the kinds of people who answer “don’t know” on polls, click on “like” regarding whatever an outspoken Facebook friend posts, or are prone to making emotional, unsupported judgments based on inadequate information. They are not independent so much as gullible, lazy, uninformed and confused.

Nonetheless, there have been encouraging signs that the new CBS regime is imposing better, less biased standards as the Weiss era commences. Before December 29, for example, CBS was the only network, save Fox News, to air even a single full-length report about the developing social services fraud scandal among Minnesota’s Somali community. Newsbusters reports that its study of December coverage by the alphabet networks indicated that as of the morning of December 30, ABC had spent less than 30 seconds total on the story, a single 25-second mention in a December 3 report.  Prior to December 29, NBC’s total coverage amounted to 65 seconds split overs three different broadcasts. NBC finally broadcast a two-minute December 29 report that recycled YouTuber Nick Shirley’s allegations in his viral video, when he dropped in on a Somali-run “Learing” center with no children in evidence at a locale that had accepted millions of dollars in state child care aid. Newsbusters found that CBS, in contrast, had devoted more than eight minutes of airtime to the scandal, including three full-length reports on December 3, December 11, and December 29.

Instead of covering the emerging scandal that reflected on the Democrat-dominated state and the governance of “Knucklehead” Tim Walz, ABC’s reporting attempted to defend the Somali population in Minnesota, beating on the “ICE raids sowing fear” drum. CBS Evening News co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois also adopted a “Somalians are the victims” framing, but reporter Jonah Kaplan has focused competently on the scandal itself. Ethics Alarms discussed the efforts by the Axis media to spin, bury or ignore the Minnesota fraud scandal, efforts that are still ongoing. The current theme is trying to denigrate Shirley, the tried and true “kill the messenger” tactic.

We shall see soon enough if CBS is up to the challenge, and whether the effort is the start of a serious return to ethical journalism, or only a temporary retreat, like CNN’s wan efforts to be less of an MSNBC clone.