The US should make lying in journalism, illegal again?

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It seems that over the years a lot of media has been caught lying and lying over and over again, just to push political agendas and ratings, etc.

But whenever they lie, their are no criminal consequences for it. You can sue if you have been damaged but the media never sees this as a real consequence to them and don't care. They have insurance that can pay for that...

But I was thinking of the movie Absence of Malice and how back then in the 80s, I guess it seems that a journalist could actually face jail time for lying. So why don't they just make it a criminal offence nowadays to do so... The media would be far more threatened on telling the truth if they knew they could very well face actual prison time, compared to having their insurance fight a lawsuit. But for some reason, there are no criminal consequences on that anymore.

What do you think?

If there were consequences for lying in media, how would economies function?

Well does every economy depend on lying?

Luxury does.

And what specifically is "lying"?
Does shortening a video, which sometimes leads viewers of the shortened version to come to different conclusions than viewers of the full length version, count as lying?
How can you be lying when the only thing you did was show only as much of the video as would fit in the time that your schedule allowed for it?

Oh I wouldn't say that. For example in my country, Canada, there is the trucker convoy protest, and the media was saying the truckers have confederate flags where no one on the ground can find no such evidence, and lies like that just to smere people.

Or how the media lied about Kyle Rittenhouse being a white supremacist, in order to make the case look such a way, where they could not find any evidence of him being one, and there was contradictions to say otherwise. Or when they first reported that Jacob Blake died from gunshots, and then later on an interview turns out he's alive. Those are two examples.

There were Confederate flags amongst the trucker protesters. And a few other flags associated with white supremacy. Not amongst the majority of protesters…..but they were there.

We have libel laws in the US. A person can be sued for lying about another person if there are consequences to that “other person.”

Okay but no one has been able to prove such flags, so I can only assume the media is lying if they cannot back it up. But also, when the media says that, they make it sound like a white supremacy issue, rather than a covid political issue.

Plus lawsuits are not good enough because people are not afraid of them. There has to be actual consequences than just lawsuits. If the media were afraid of lawsuits than they wouldn't lie so muc. The consequences have to be actual prison sentences to be real consequences.

A tangent from the topic but relevant to that above from you the topic starter:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... ted-states

Oh sorry, I cannot go to that link without having a subscription.

Huh, wonder what is making the difference since I have no subscription?

Well, here, just found this, Yahoo should let anybody see the page,
https://news.yahoo.com/jonah-goldberg-a ... p_catchall

There is another option on the table and it has happened in Ontario before. Ill link to the Quebec version because it doesnt require as much background knowledge to get convincing than Ontarios version.

Just skim the CBC article to see the cops version of what happened,

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebec-p ... t-1.656171

and then see what happened.



More directly on topic, some of the key trucker protesters have said some pretty disturbing things, and sound to me like Q-tarts only Q-tarts say "muzzies" and these guys say "Islamists"

Yet I hear more about this flag on an anonymous truck than I hear about potentially far more serious issues coming from main protesters.

Oh okay, but what does this have to do with what we are talking about exactly? That the media failed to mention this part of it?

I thought this was logical as posted,
"
ironpony wrote:
But also, when the media says that, they make it sound like a white supremacy issue, rather than a covid political issue.
"
A tangent from the topic but relevant to that above from you the topic starter:
"
... he coalitions that make up the left and right have changed profoundly, and how their attitudes and ideas are changing as a result.
"
as in, what issues are important to whom, which issues get accented, and who exactly is the one who has that issue, seem to be in a state of flux.

Oh okay. But what does that state of flux have to do with the media lying?