[matt4077]

Among other things, this would open the door to the government demand access to the identity of whistleblowers.

It also doesn't actually address the problem. The news media, when properly defined, doesn't actually lie.

Now that statement needs some qualifications: by "news media" I'm referring to Fox News and everything better. Fox, being the worst case here, actually takes great care to label their primetime 360-minutes-hate as opinion. It's just very easy to rephrase a lie: "Is Obama a muslim, or even a vegetarian? These are questions many people are asking!".

It's infowars and the like where actual lying happens. But those programs could just as easily add such caveats. And the sort of campaign this paper mentions simply happens on anonymously registered domains with no business (or any) presence in the US, or entirely on social media.

Ultimately, the problem is people that want to indulge their fantasies, and want to be lied to. No sane person would watch a red-faced lunatic alternatively sell herbal remedies for athlete's foot and accuse Hillary Clinton of running a ring of pedophiles from a pizza place and consider it a quality news source.

[r00fus]

Isn't the issue that sometimes Fox (and even the current Press secretary) will actually take Infowars content and rebadge it as news?

Just saying they can spout it as "opinion" is like allowing usurious click-wrap agreements - everyone will just click through because it's "all opinion all the time".