>>>Perhaps good old libel laws should be brushed up and revamped, so if you publish
>banana story which gets debunked as lie, you could be liable for some big bucks. If that was the case, majority of them would go out of business in no time.
>
>The US has a sentinel case making MSM immune from defamation for public interest stories about a public figure. So if a loon accuses Trump of having a Mexican love child he has abandoned which is the true reason he wants the wall, the NYT can publish and amplify that story without any effort to validate or act responsibly. If Trump complains, the NYT can then publish their snide letter saying there's nothing you can do except suck it up. Oh that's right- they already did do that. Trump reacts by saying (as you have) that MSM is abusing the privilege that therefore needs review; the NYT and its familiars then newspeak this into Trump trying to stifle free speech.

Yup, "free speech is a bitch", yet still protected. Thus, the only measure of accountability is knowing than anyone can speak freely against another. There were times during the presidential campaign (including the one for the Republican nominee) when a lot people witnessed something that looked a lot like a circus. Unfortunately, it is hard to get the facts straight in the middle of a loon show, and this campaign had a lot of that. Caveat auditor, I guess.
However, I don't think you'd find many, if any, on either side of the aisle who would agree to limit free speech. It is one of the things that makes America great already ;) And sometimes, messy too.

An interesting piece, meant to lighten up the conversation :-)
http://www.theonion.com/article/supreme-court-upholds-freedom-of-speech-in-obsceni-17372
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