Journalist and news commentators will forfeit their positions and, when applicable, licenses when they can be shown to have communicated what they knew to be a falsehood.
Why is this important?
The free press (and by extension the news/commentary media) is held by the constitution and tradition to be one of the great safeguards of American democracy. At present, there is no consequence for deliberately misleading readers viewers and listeners with known falsehoods. We should follow the example of Canada with a statute that requires that a commentator forfeit his/her license if he/she can be shown to have said or written something that they knew to be untrue.
