Sunday Morning celebrates America’s beauty in America-at-250 special

CBS News Sunday Morning published American Panorama: From sea to shining sea on June 28, 2026, a video segment built around Jonathan Irish’s photographs of America the Beautiful. The piece arrived as part of CBS Sunday Morning’s semiquincentennial programming, with Jane Pauley hosting the network’s America-at-250 special, These United States - America at 250.

Irish, a travel and conservation photographer based in Golden, Colorado, has built his career around wild places and conservation stories. National Geographic says his United States project spans all 59 U.S. national parks, a scope that gives the images a national map rather than a single scenic stop. The publication describes his work as both a celebration of America’s natural heritage and a call to protect it, a combination that fits the broadcast’s larger focus on what Americans choose to hold in common.

That common ground was not limited to mountains, deserts, or coastlines. CBS News also used the 250th-anniversary moment to explore what Americans think is best about the country, pairing the visual segment with companion stories that included polling and a 250-song Essential American Songbook. The result placed Irish’s photographs inside a broader editorial package about identity, memory, and the cultural touchstones that still travel across regional and political lines.

The visual emphasis matters because the imagery itself does the work of argument. Irish’s frames of protected landscapes and open space suggest that, even in a divided country, the country’s physical scale still carries unusual force. A project that covers all 59 national parks can do that in a way slogans cannot: it turns geography into a shared record of abundance, access, and stewardship.

CBS Sunday Morning, which describes itself as the No. 1 Sunday morning news program, used the anniversary package to connect those images to a larger question ahead of the nation’s 250th year: what Americans rally around when the subject is not policy or partisanship, but the land itself. In Irish’s work, and in the network’s programming around it, the answer runs through the same view, from sea to shining sea.