The solution to bad speech isn't to ban it, it's just for others to put out better news. However, people don't seek out real news, they seek out confirmation of their existing beliefs so no amount of fair and accurate fact based reporting is going to change that, they'll still seek out whatever organization offers them confirmation of their biases whether it's called news or not. Fox is popular because it lies. The audience doesn't want real news; they want to believe what they believe and have it confirmed, nothing more.
Solving a problem doesn't always mean requiring something bullet-proof. Good enough can be enough. It won't stop some people from misleading with the truth, but a lot more people will be better informed than they are now, which is an important step.
> However, people don't seek out real news, they seek out confirmation of their existing beliefs so no amount of fair and accurate fact based reporting is going to change that, they'll still seek out whatever organization offers them confirmation of their biases whether it's called news or not.
Exactly, which is why factual standards are important to classify as proper journalism. They can still seek out their confirmation, but it will be more difficult to find it, and more difficult to convince others of their distorted realities.
They're often quite non-factual actually. And you can't call it "press" unless it's factual, free or not. You can't just ignore one factor in favour of the other.
Furthermore, you seem to be assuming quite a bit about what I mean when by factual standards. Anyone can broadcast whatever opinions they like, so free speech remains intact, but to call yourself a news organization requires satisfying stricter criteria on fact checking, data sourcing and biased presentation.
Perhaps one thing that's ignored a lot: equal time/space should be given to retractions due to factual errors. That better aligns the incentives to get things right the first time.