You have to make a huge stretch, as I said, to support any claim there is a 'atural effect' from this particular story, especially against a member of the media. As I pointed out, other than libel, it's rare that the media would be held accountable by the government UNLESS they can make a direct connection. One example that might come to mind is the Libby-Plame controversy when a reporter was held for contempt for not revealing sources for allegedly outing Valeri Plame. This about the only way other than libel, that a court might step in. The press is otherwsie very much protected from government interference.
Here, I’ll C&P how this CRS Report describes this:
I've been reading through this and I still think there would be a huge stretch to apply any of this to the Hutch News or any other specific media source. How does their claim affect federal funding or regulations? How did they confide to an authority of a federal agency or department?? Which decisionmaking body was influenced by the Hutch News story?? At best, such a story would only be tracked by Kansas senators or representatives. It's doubtful any would cite this particular story as influencing their feelings about how they think Obama is legit. I certainly doubt that it could be tied to any of the military who are trying to prosecute LTC Lakin either.
It doesn’t have to be proven that the lie actually DID influence anybody. It only has to be proven that the subject matter was within the jurisdiction of the federal government and that the person deliberately chose to lie.
There are all kinds of excuses that the media can use to say that they are never responsible for deliberate lies. But I don’t see where this law allows those loopholes. It is true that nobody seems to be prosecuting these things, but I don’t see anything in the law itself that should allow the media to think that just because they have a press pass they are immune to prosecution under this law.
And that’s exactly what we need. We need the media to know that we DO have a way to hold them legally responsible for deliberate lies that impact federal issues.
As long as we’ve got judges saying that Twitter decides legal cases, there is no way to claim that deliberately false media statements are harmless because they’re not under oath.