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> Ultimately, legal tools should be limited to problems they can solve. Fake news is not one of these problems.

False. Replace "fake news" with "false advertising", and there's ample precedent for how this might be achieved. We've got laws at both state and federal levels that make deceptive or misleading claims illegal, to protect consumers; protecting consumers of news media needn't be any more problematic constitutionally.

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Imposing criminal or civil liability for false news has a chilling effect on someone reporting even true news if there is reason to believe that the government might disagree with the reporting. I certainly wouldn't trust Trump's DOJ not to abuse such a law. Just look at how the Alien And Sedition Acts were abused.

Supreme Court jurisdiction holds that commercial speech (advertising) is less protected than other speech. This is why laws against false advertising are usually upheld while similar laws against other kinds of false speech would be ruled unconstitutional.

Courts have commonly treated advertising as less constitutionally protected than other forms of speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech

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