Let's review this issue of media lying for a minute.
One complication is that a lot of lies fall into opinion. Take 'Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11'. Now, that's not true, but who can PROVE that there wasn't some secret conspiracy that wasn't uncovered - so even if the odds are 1 in a million, isn't it still an opinion that it's a lie, so people can defend making the claim as opinion?
But even taking outright falsehoods - say, the birthers or some Swift Boat claims - there are big problems with trying to prevent the media from lying.
Once the mechanism is there to do so, that mechanism can be abused. When we had the Bush administration stating *as fact*, that there wasn't any doubt, that Saddam was a threat to the US with WMD, couldn't they have used any such mechanism to silence media who told 'the lie' that he might not have WMD?
Also, the public can get caught up in a view; is there much besides the right to free speech even to what's called a lie that can address wrong views - for example, if everyone believed in the deep south in 1825 that blacks could never learn to read and write, what but the rights for someone to tell 'the lie' that they could would help that wrong view get attacked?
The measures against the lies quickly become the measures against the truth in the hands of the corrupt.
However, as nice as it would be to say that that addresses the problem, as if the truth-tellers can just tell the truth, the fact is that money is a tool for lying.
Money buys the media, the airing of opinion. It's a very corrupting factor and effective for squelching the truth.
The old saying that 'the best antidote for lies is to tell the truth and win in the marketplace of discussion' is fine when both sides are heard. Money largely kills that.
You might want to say, 'if a media outlet lies a lot, people won't want to listen', but money trumps that. With money, they can buy a place in the market.
"The big lie" further says that with the money to repeat lies, they will persuade much of the public - leading the public to call the people on the right side the liars.
In that case, there is no good antidote.
There is one positive development to counter that - the internet. There, people who are telling the truth can get heard, somewhat.
Back to lying, it's one thing to talk about 'the government' doing something, from criminal charges for lying to things like license suspension for the less and less important broadcast licenses. It's another to discuss civil remedies - should people harmed by media lies be able to sue?
That seems pretty impractical. A lot of harms are indirect and vague, and the cost of the media is usually 'free' - subsidized by advertisers, bundled on cable, etc.
In fact ironically, people who want to pay for news without someone else paying for it introducing bias face a steep cost, and get a very limited market share.
The small number of publications like this include 'The Nation' - how many subscribers do they have to their small publication? Who here subscribes?
IMO there is no good way I see to enforce measures against the media lying, and the right to lie is important in protecting the right to tell the truth against power.
But we would do well to support measures as we used to have to localize editorial control and break up the media oligopoly of mega-corporate ownership.
Even if that requires, in the public interests, regulation or incentives to override pure market interests - much less adopting something like the BBC approach.
Here in the bay area, with nine counties directly called the bay area, we had many daily newspapers with local editorial control. Now, we have two newspaper owners - the San Francisco Chronicle, and one company that owns every other formerly independent paper, including my city's, including the formerly excellent San Jose Mercury News. I see different cities' papers for sale side by side, each with the same headlines and editorial spin from the same one owner, cut and pasted for efficiency.
We could use a media not only loyal to profit and its corporate owners. That will indirectly help with the issue of lies in the media.
One more thing, I don't think there was a 'golden age' of journalism. A century ago we had Hearst promising he could start a war.
IMO, the citizens of the US have better information available than any time in earlier US history - but money helps keep the people who take advantage small.
I can list 50 good books on the financial crisis - and perhaps 90% of Americans will have very wrong views of the topic and not have read them.
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