Yeah, this is the problem, and this is why the government has absolutely no business whatsoever trying to micromanage the press, ever, under any circumstances. You wanna turn the industry that keeps things accountable over to a government that is trying to force its own intelligence agency to lie for an agenda? No ****ing way.
The system for dealing with false accusations is fine as it is. It is already a punishable crime to falsely accuse someone of a crime. It is already possible to sue a journalist for libel if they were negligent (if they weren't negligent, then your accusation would go back to the accuser).
Believe me, journalists are well-taught to avoid being libelous, and they put a lot of work into avoiding it. That's why they are so rarely successfully sued. They do their jobs well on the whole. Fact is, there are very few "victims" of bad reporting. Most people who lose face due to the media lose it because they did something wrong. Well, maybe they shouldda thought of that before they did it.
Rarely, that's not the case, but the reality is that no system can ever be perfect, and trying to micromanage them isn't going to change that. That's just an immutable fact of reality. But journalism is about as good as it's realistically possible to get, and there is already a system for reprimanding them when they don't do their jobs properly. We don't need more.
Al Sharpton is allowed to be an obnoxious talking head. That is not a crime, and the government doesn't have a right to silence him.
Al Sharpton is not a reporter. The sycophantic stenographers in the press dutifully report his biased assumptions and lies with no context to judge his truthiness.
This is, in it's own way, a lie. So is reporting without context that "sources say" or that something is "causing questions". At the same time, adding context to some reports and not to others is bias:
The bank was robbed by Sam Jones. The bank was robbed by Sam Jones, a black man.
Back to Al, if the context provided is that Al is a noted civlil rights advocate, that creates one context. If the context provided is that Al is a loud mouthed advocate for his own screen time who has been known to distort and corrupt the truth, that is wholly another.
Arguably, both narratives are true.
Journalists are, as you say, "well-taught to avoid being libelous". This does not mean that they are tring to relay an accurate report of the events as they happened. It means they are taught to source their assertions.
If you say in the paper that Al Sharpton is a Klan member, that might be actionable against you. If a reporter heard you say that and then published, "According to Smoke and Mirrors, Al Sharpton is a Klan member", that is not actionable against the reporter.
The accuracy of the statement regarding Al is no longer at issue. The legal issue for the reporter is whether or not you said what he said you said. Libel avoided. Very probably a lie is spread.
The press using techniques like the quote, the unattributed quote and the "raising questions" ploy is protected against libel and that is why you see so many devices like this employed.
Do we suspend the first amendment in order to avoid these techniques of lying. Probably not a good idea. Would it be a good idea for the editorial staffs of the major news sources to actually police their own work through professional and ethical work standards and practices? Probably so.
CBS is in the forefront in critiquing a Drudge-like operation as not having a robust editorial process and yet their editorial staff approved a Dan Rather hosted hour long lie about George W Bush. Disgraceful. Murrow must have been spinning like a pinwheel in his grave.
Like it or not, the Yellow Journalism of our past is back and stringer than ever. The Agenda and political slant of every national news outlet is apparent and obvious for all to see.
Propaganda is what we are fed. It's all that's available. Pick your poison and drink it to the bottom.