This has come up before for Fox News in the courts. They won. Because they are not a news channel and only air opinion pieces they aren't subject to the Fairness Doctrine.

Also, Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine so it doesn't really matter. Basically Fox is free to lie as much as they like and it's perfectly legal because some politicians found it to be beneficial.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...

https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-host-shepard-smith-opinion...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-the-whole-newspa...

Any time a Fox News host is pressed about their lies they fall back to the "nobody would believe these obvious lies" defense, and it works. Accountability is dead.

Traditionally, the repercussion for lying was loss of reputation/business/relationships. It didn't always work that way, of course, but it was a moderately effective dynamic overall.

What's new now is that everyone's ability to create a network (and leverage network effects) via social media is tremendously amplified. That means both a reward system for embracing lies as long as the lies agree with in-group beliefs, and a greatly increased ability to spread them.

Congress can't legislate that media (or Karen on Twitter for that matter) has to tell the truth -- that's a pretty well established point of law and you'd likely need to amend the Constitution if you wanted wholesale, mandated change. Against the backdrop of that not-gonna-happen-in-our-lifetime heavy lift, the boomlet in deplatforming is actually a pretty good (although I personally dislike it) and organic solution. Private-sector actors are doing what Congress and the Court cannot.

Now, does it solve for the dopamine drip and self-reinforcing vitriol that caused our current problem? No. But it does, at least partially, quarantine it.

That populist soundbyte has been spreading like a virus but I have yet to see any elaboration let alone a coherent plan. What consequences, and how would it be remotely constitutional? Boycott those who advertise on Fox News? Sure - that is well within your rights of freedom of association. Libel to the typical standards of actual malice for public figures sure. Outlawing "lies"? There are so many things wrong with that. Forget the zeitgeist and imagine what your worst enemies or worst people in history could do with such tools and deciding what counts as a lie. 'Fake news' punishments for pointing out the lack of evidence of hydroxychloroquine as effective for COVID-19.

The lies need to do demonstrable harm to someone (and be about that someone) in order for it to be defamation. Lies that just "make the world a worse place" are much harder to deal with.

For instance, in the Snyder v. Phelps case, all sorts of nasty (and probably untrue) things were said, yet SCOTUS ruled in favor of Phelps.

Emperor Trump thinks this is a great idea, and institutes a Department of Truth to decide what is true and prosecute liars. For example, if someone makes the baseless lie that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, they're going to be looking at some jail time.

Yes. It absolutely is a free speech issue. In fact, criticism of the government, e.g. election processes, is specifically mentioned in the First Amendment.

> There must be repercussions for lies

Nah that's cancel culture. /s

When government decides a group must be punished then bad things happen.

Genocide, civil war, etc.

http://www.projetaladin.org/holocaust/en/history-of-the-holo...