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Bari Weiss’s CBS News and MSNBC both just laid out their new journalistic principles — and they’re fascinatingly different

Nieman Lab · Laura Hazard Owen · last updated

Lot of news coming out of the networks this morning: Bari Weiss, founder of the pro-Israel, anti-woke Free Press, has sold the four-year-old news site to CBS parent company Paramount for a reported $150 million and is the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. And the left-leaning cable channel MSNBC has begun its split from NBC News, with plans to be fully independent by the end of October.

Both organizations are marking the occasion by sending top-10 lists of their values and principles to staff — and these lists offer a window into the different ways CBS and MSNBC are thinking about maintaining old audiences and reaching new ones.

Here are Bari Weiss’s “10 core journalistic values” for CBS (via Brian Stelter):

1. Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is.
2. Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual.
3. Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly — wherever it leads.
4. Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world.
5. Journalism that explains things clearly, without pretension or jargon.
6. Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny.
7. Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate.
8. Journalism that rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity.
9. Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era.
10. Journalism that understands that the best way to serve America is to endeavor to present the public with the facts, first and foremost.

And here are MSNBC’s “official 10 principles” from Brian Carovillano, SVP of standards and editorial partnerships for news (via Poynter):

Integrity: We uphold the highest ethical standards. We respect the law when reporting the news. We advocate for journalists’ rights. We protect and defend press freedom and the First Amendment. We respect our colleagues, our sources and the communities we cover.
Accuracy: We aim to be accurate in our reporting 100 percent of the time. If we establish that our reporting is flawed, we take prompt action to correct or clarify the mistake.
Fairness: We report the news with an open mind. We aim to give the subject(s) of our original reporting an opportunity to comment before publication.
Opinion: The views expressed by our opinion journalists and contributors are based on accurate, reported facts.
Our Sources: Our objective is to rely on sources we can identify, by name, in our reporting. When anonymity is the only way to report critical information, we aim to have sources with firsthand knowledge and to be transparent about why we granted them anonymity.
Emerging Technologies: We use generative AI and other technology tools when they can improve our journalism, but we will not publish content created solely by AI, and we disclose any public-facing use of AI.
Perspectives: We believe our audience is best served when our journalism reflects a variety of perspectives on the world we cover.
Transparency: We disclose to our audience any commercial initiatives that may intersect with our editorial content.
Independence: We avoid any real or perceived conflicts of interest. We do not accept gifts or favors that could appear to influence news judgment.
Who We Are: Our journalists hold themselves to the same high standards of professional and journalistic integrity in their outside appearances and on their personal social media.

I did a close read and while there are certainly similarities between these top-10 lists, it’s the differences that are most interesting to me. Most Americans will never read these news organizations’ policies. The memos’ primary purpose is internal messaging, but they also provide interesting insight into how leaders are thinking at a time when Americans’ trust in the media has never been lower. (Adults ages 65 and over — i.e, the primary audiences for both CBS News and MSNBC — have “significantly more faith than younger Americans in the media,” Gallup noted last week. Those audiences are disappearing, and CBS and MSNBC both face big challenges in attracting younger viewers.)

A few things I noticed:

— MSNBC’s policy focuses much more on journalists themselves, and journalism as a profession. The policy is written from the journalists’ point of view (lots of “we,” “who we are,” etc.) The first bullet notes, “We advocate for journalists’ rights.”

— MSNBC foregrounds press freedom and the First Amendment. Weiss doesn’t talk about those concepts. Her memo mentions “America” twice (once in the values section, once further up in the memo) and “American” once. MSNBC’s principles do not include the word America or American, but there is one reference to “the world we cover.”

— CBS’s values as laid out by Weiss focus explicitly on journalism as a product for consumption and something that fills a function: It “makes sense of a noisy, confusing world,” “explains things clearly,” and “rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity.”

— MSNBC’s principles focus heavily on traditional journalistic ethics — asking for comment, anonymity policy, not accepting gifts, disclosures, corrections. Weiss doesn’t mention any of those things.

— Weiss mentions politics and differing views several times (“holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny”; “wide spectrum of views and voices”; “best arguments on all side of a debate”). (Paramount CEO David Ellison, who will oversee Weiss directly, also told The Wall Street Journal Monday: “We want CBS to speak to that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves at center-left to center-right.”)

MSNBC says, “We believe our audience is best served when our journalism reflects a variety of perspectives on the world we cover,” but never mentions political parties or offering viewpoints from all sides.

— Weiss appears more enthusiastic about digital: “Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era.” MSNBC is warier and also more specific: “We use generative AI and other technology tools when they can improve our journalism, but we will not publish content created solely by AI, and we disclose any public-facing use of AI.”

— Weiss’s language emphasizes speed (“rushes toward” and, earlier in the memo, an “urgent deadline”). MSNBC’s does not (though corrections will be “prompt”); instead, its uses the word “accurate” or “accuracy” three times. Weiss does not use the word “accuracy,” though she mentions being “factual” and “the facts.”

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