https://www.businessinsider.com/covington-kid-nicholas-sandm...
Basically, the news was just reporting what someone said, so no foul.
> He objected to widely-reported statements by Phillips to the effect that Sandmann had "blocked" him and "would not allow him to retreat."
> But the judge said that these are "objectively unverifiable" and so can only count as opinion, which is unactionable in this case, as it is protected speech.
> Bertelsman also said: "The media defendants were covering a matter of great public interest, and they reported Phillips's first-person view of what he experienced.
> "This would put the reader on notice that Phillips was simply giving his perspective on the incident."
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/court-rules-that-being-cal...
There is a reason the majority of the public distrusts the mainstream media. Mainstream media outlets are inveterate liars.
Almost always it is an highly curated set of facts; often intentionally designed to mislead people.
The author is not pushing the idea that the media is honest, rather that the way we describe their dishonesty is inaccurate.
My personal interpretation is that as long as you say factually true things you are sort of protected both on defamation and ethics claims.
I think another reasonable counterexample is Jussie Smollett's catastrophe, where any fleeting scrutiny whatsoever would tell you that it was fiction, but the media failed to question even the most ridiculous story and ran with the false narrative for weeks.