Nowadays there IS no difference. Not when those who "report" the news also spout off with their own personal two cents about the news. The reporters are also talking potato heads.
You're conflating NBC, CBS, etc, with cable.
news is on the public broadcast stations, and opinions are on cable. There might be sections, just as a newspaper has an opinion section, where network news have pundits, but it's nothing like that which is dispensed on cable, and this is widely known.
Just because it says "news" on cable, you know you are getting news mixed with commentary, some shows a lot more than others.
Why? Because cable is more market oriented. That's what markets do to "news", they put up what people want to hear and see.
Repubs just want tabloid quality bash-the-left. This is why shows like Hannity and Infowars get popular with the right. That's their mentality.
The left wants hard hitting exposés of the right ( and anyone/thing who deserves it)
based on facts. If the right seems to want it, you can kiss facts and the concept of the greater truth goodbye. A classic example is how Hannity, for months, harped on a Hillary sold uranium to Russians conspiracy theory that was widely debunked, and continued to do it despite this fact. He also did this on other stories, as well.
On the major networks, at least it was historically, the news was seen as a public service, and was not there to make much money, per se,
for shareholders as possible, though they did compete, and they did want to make money, but just not with the crass merchantilism that is on cable news.
