One of the biggest problems we have in America is that we live in information bubbles. Disinformation is allowed to flourish in this environment, in ways that we never could have imagined even a decade ago (although I did read a great novel called "$everance" that predicted it could).
The question has been, how do we fix it? We can't police thought or speech through regulation. That's a slippery slope that will lead us to places we don't want to go, depending on who is in charge at the time. We can't police it through education (like fact checkers), because people don't read those, or just assume that the fact checkers themselves are biased. We can't put the genie back in the bottle (be reinstating the Fairness Doctrine), because that will only be perceived as putting a thumb on the scale of what is bias and what is not. Who decides that?
The one thing we can do is punish flat out lies, particularly those that defame, libel, and slander. There are laws on the books to do this.
How do we know that Fox News realizes they have been provably lying to their audience? Because the Dominion vote machine company sued them for billions, and while Fox News said all the right words about defending themselves, they also fired the man who has been telling that Dominion lie more than anyone else, Lou Dobbs. Trust me, they know they are in deep doo doo. They can't prove what Dobbs said, and the Dominion people probably can prove he's a liar. That's an assumption on my part, but if you disagree, perhaps you can give me another explanation for canceling their top-rated anchor.
In another good development, simply calling something Fake News (or a lie or defamation) isn't good enough in a court of law--you have to prove it. See the case of OAN vs. Rachel Maddow. OAN sued Maddow for calling something on their air "Russian propaganda." Unfortunately for OAN, Maddow COULD prove it, and OAN could not prove their case. So, not only did OAN lose the case, their case was so shaky it was declared frivolous, and they had to pay Maddow (and her network MSNBC) $250,000 in legal fees.
It's a clunky solution.
But until someone comes up with something better, it's the best solution we have right now.
We are still miles away from just getting back to sane. That first step is necessary before we take another.
