In the wake of the largest terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 and the biggest mass shooting in US history the mods of /r/news failed to provide any sort of recourse to learn about and discuss this tragedy, let alone help those affected. 

As a default subreddit, the mods of /r/news have a responsibility to the users of Reddit. And they failed, miserably. Due to this, the subreddit does not deserve to be a default subreddit anymore, as they have proven that they cannot fulfill their duties to maintain the freedom of speech that reddit.com claims to support.

Furthermore, the moderator team contains individuals that are less than welcoming to those that may be new to Reddit, and may be against Reddit's content policy (#3 in particular).

For these reasons the removal of /r/news as a default subreddit is in the best interests of the staff of reddit.com and it's users.