Although I disagree with the premise that news shouldn't contain any opinion (because it's not always black and white, especially since the article in question contains original reporting), I would play a devil's advocate and argue that this isn't an opinion.
The sentence states that this cannot be justified by the government, which may be a fact. Or do you know of any justification? We could maybe even prove that this contradicts freedom of speech, and therefore cannot be justified.
(What I am trying to show here is that you can, to some extent, make an opinion into a fact and vice versa.)
That is the right question. And, I think at this point, it's become abundantly clear that default subreddits should not be "randomly" moderated. Policy (written by Reddit staff) should be set for moderators to follow.
When you have a website that gets visited by more than a hundred million users, this just won't do. Why are a few handful of anonymous random users dictating what is seen and not seen by millions and millions as "news? That makes no sense, something has to change.
There is something quite different about "news"... from, say, "biking". Most subreddits can stay as-is, but r/news and other subreddits would probably do better with officially picked staff.
The admins (disclaimerbrag: I used to be one) prefer to exercise control one level up: by deciding which subreddits to put in the default set. So the moderators have near-absolute domain over their subreddit, but only the ones who do a good job get featured on the default front page.
That restores the proper incentives and controls to the system while maximizing free speech and experimentation.
The sentence states that this cannot be justified by the government, which may be a fact. Or do you know of any justification? We could maybe even prove that this contradicts freedom of speech, and therefore cannot be justified.
(What I am trying to show here is that you can, to some extent, make an opinion into a fact and vice versa.)