My very limited experience with regular journalism and tabloid journalism is that tabloid journalists are scrupulously factual and accurate, while regular journalists more or less write whatever they want without much regard to whether it is true or even coherent. This makes a great deal of sense if you think about the environment of legal risk in which the respective categories of journalists exist: regular journalists are essentially engaged in stenography for the powerful, flattery for everyone, and providing readers with the cheap illusion that they understand things they don't; meanwhile, tabloid journalists are engaged in viciously attacking the famous.

In short, where you write "protect more factual and more fair journalism", you should have written "protect less factual and more favorable journalism".

> Before the separation of the American colonies from Britain to form the United States, there was already a defense of truth to libel claims. Say what is true, and libel is not much of a worry to you.

I had never heard this before. Consider this summary of the Zenger trial of 1735 here ( http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/zenger/zengera... ):

> The trial opened on August 4 on the main floor of New York's City Hall with Attorney General Bradley's reading of the information filed against Zenger. Bradley told jurors that Zenger, "being a seditious person and a frequent printer and publisher of false news and seditious libels" had "wickedly and maliciously" devised to "traduce, scandalize, and vilify" Governor Cosby and his ministers. Bradley said that "Libeling has always been discouraged as a thing that tends to create differences among men, ill blood among the people, and oftentimes great bloodshed between the party libeling and the party libeled."

> After a brief statement from John Chambers, Zenger's court-appointed attorney, Andrew Hamilton rose to announce that his client--sitting in an enclosed box in the courtroom--would not contest having printed and published the allegedly libelous materials contained in the Weekly Journal and that "therefore I shall save Mr. Attorney the trouble of examining his witnesses to that point."

> Following Hamilton's surprise announcement, the prosecution's three witnesses (Zenger's journeyman associate and two of his sons) were sent home, and there was a long silence. Finally, Bradley spoke: "As Mr. Hamilton has confessed the printing and publishing of these libels, I think the Jury must find a verdict for the king. For supposing they were true, the law says that [sic] are not the less libelous for that. Nay, indeed the law says their being true is an aggravation of the crime." Bradley proceeded to offer a detailed and generally accurate account of the state of law on seditious libel of the time, supporting his conclusion that the truth of a libel is no defense.

> Hamilton argued that the libel law of England ought not to be the libel law of New York

> His arguments might have been well-received by jurors, but Hamilton had almost no law to support his position that the truth should be a defense to the charge of libel. Not surprisingly, Chief Justice Delancey ruled that Hamilton could not present evidence of the truth of the statements contained in Zenger's Journal. "The law is clear that you cannot justify a libel," Delancey announced. "The jury may find that Zenger printed and published those papers, and leave to the Court to judge whether they are libelous."

(all emphasis is mine)

There's not much common ground between your position that "there was already a defense of truth to libel claims. Say what is true, and libel is not much of a worry to you" and the more conventional position that under English law of the time "a libelous statement's being true is an aggravation of the crime".