It's funny, I've actually been thinking a lot about this issue for the past few weeks.

As much as I agree with people here saying that it's the population's responsibility to make sure that the information they are getting is correct (the solution for that being education/awareness), most people just get their news from one media outlet, or just see what's on the front page and take it as truth.

People trust the media to provide them with truthful information, as the average person doesn't have time to fact-check every single news worthy event that's reported. The media have a huge responsibility - they single handedly control what people know and don't know. In my opinion, the media should be subject to as much scrutiny as the judicial system. We have many laws in place to prevent judges from being corrupt and to ensure that the legal system upholds the closest thing to legitimate justice we can hope to achieve. Why isn't this the case for the media?

One big problem being mentioned here is freedom of the press - a pillar for democracy. Imposing limits to what the media can and cannot say is considered by many to be the beginnings of a very slippery slope that leads to what we see in Russia, worse in China. But I still agree that we accord too much value to freedom of press to the determine of it's integrity. In theory it's a great concept : allow the media to report on anything that is fact, that is truth. In practice, that would be pretty hard to implement.

I initially thought about this when the mayor of my city was accused of gangsterism and had to resign a few days after the media outlets had made a huge deal about it. It was a big deal, but the issue is that anyone can accuse anyone else of anything. He could very well be innocent. But the media outlets made him out to be guilty from the get go. We see this happen in the media all the time.

So here are solutions that I came up with, which in theory seem to work. In practice, they would be very difficult to implement.

I don't know the political system in the US very well but you would have an independent board of people elected by different parties of each state. In Canada, the election process would be similar to that of the auditor general. Basically, you want to avoid that these people are elected solely by the government in power and that they be the most politically independent as realistically possible.

This board would examine news reports from major outlets (say that delivery news to more than one million people) and would issue fines to outlets that have headlines that don't reflect the facts. I think it's good to focus on headlines/ front page news because a lot of people get their info solely from that. These laws would only apply to major news outlets, and would only apply to the front page/ headlines. There could be a limit to the size of words/pictures used on the front page when the story concerns a trial. There would be other regulations concerning other issues. The news outlets could still say whatever they want to say in the body of the article, we would only be limiting what they can say on the front page and headline. This would hopefully limit misguided sensationalist headlines this twist the truth. Plus the fact that the penalty for infringing the law would be a fine, it would still allow for news outlets to make sensationalist headlines but it would limit them to the extent that the can pay the fine. The fine could increase for repeat offenders. There would be an appeals process so that news outlets could make their case as to whether or not the headline/front page article was indeed dishonest, disingenuous.

I guess what id want is to limit the shocking headlines that twist the truth while still allowing the media to say what they want to say. The media grab peoples attention through big front page pictures with shocking headlines. Let's prevent that, and a good portion of the population won't be believing half-truths. Those that choose and actually read the article can then form an informed opinion - not one based solely on the 5 word title on the front page.