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Scalia argued his view on “textualism” was the ultimate defense of the First Amendment. In March 2012, an Associated Press report said he told an audience at Wesleyan University that the Court’s early justices would be “astonished that the notion of the Constitution changes to mean whatever each successive generation would like it to mean. … In fact, it would be not much use to have a First Amendment, for example, if the freedom of speech included only what some future generation wanted it to include. That would guarantee nothing at all.” That opinion didn’t prevent Scalia from harsh criticism of what is widely viewed as one of the essential court rulings protecting free speech and a free press — the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. At the Newseum in the Aspen Institute 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, Scalia said the landmark ruling meant “you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether it’s true or not. “Now the old libel law used to be (that) you’re responsible, you say something false that harms somebody’s reputation, we don’t care if it was told to you by nine bishops, you are liable,” Scalia said. “New York Times v. Sullivan just cast that aside because the Court thought in modern society, it’d be a good idea if the press could say a lot of stuff about public figures without having to worry. And that may be correct, that may be right, but if it was right it should have been adopted by the people. It should have been debated in the New York Legislature and the New York Legislature could have said, ‘Yes, we’re going to change our libel law.’” But in Times v. Sullivan, Scalia said the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, “… simply decided, ‘Yes, it used to be that … George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we don’t think that’s a good idea anymore.’”
JUSTICE SCALIA: THE 45 WORDS — AND ORIGINAL MEANING — OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

“you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether it’s true or not.” There is something to be said for that approach, assuming that an inadvertent libel originating in excessive trust of a “reliable” source can ordinarily be apologized for amicably. But the rub comes in when the source you rely on is the journalism cartel. The journalism cartel’s faux probative value would have to be litigated away to make that dispensation valid.

And the rub comes in when you rely on someone’s “recovered” (read, synthesized by a psychoanalyst) memory. No court should ever hear a “recovered” memory; recovered memories are synthesized by a process which would be inadmissible in court but which is shielded from an opposing lawyer’s challenge by HIPPA. Understand, a “recovered” memory is a memory - in the sense that the “rememberer” sincerely cannot distinguish the memory from a valid, probative memory. Which simply makes the “rememberer” a devastatingly effective “witness" of something that person never actually experienced.

My analysis is that

Journalism is about news. Bad news. Bad news which reflects poorly on society. The word “gospel” actually means good news - and the gospel is two thousand years old. Good things typically are openly planned; someone decides to build a house, and successfully completes it without much notice. Let that same house burn down, tho - and that is unplanned (and bad), and the public takes notice. On any given weekday, many scores of millions of Americans may get up in the morning with purpose, go to work and have their worth validated, and safely return home without public notice. The opposite - unemployment, dissatisfaction, labor strife - makes news.
News which reflects poorly on society naturally suggests that “there oughta be a law.” It is inherently pro-big government, and thus inherently grist for socialist propaganda.
The wire services created, and sustain, virtual meetings of all major US journalists. Back in 1776 Adam Smith noted that “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." It follows that you have to be naive as a babe to assume that the entirety of major journalism can have been continually meeting, virtually, for a century and a half without having long since creating “a conspiracy against the public.” Journalism is dominated by a cartel.
A conspiracy against the public by journalists would, logically, entail a self-serving propaganda campaign. You know, such as, “Journalists are objective.”
“Journalists are objective” is a logical fallacy, in that objectivity is a laudable goal but not a state of being.
Worse, “Journalists are objective” tells journalists not to venture into territory in which their objectivity would be likely to be challenged. And the way to assure that is to be certain that you are going along with all other journalists, and therefore will get along with all other journalists.
Since “Journalists are objective”, is a fallacy, the propaganda campaign to that effect actually redefines the word “objective” to mean “in accord with the journalism cartel consensus.” Not only so, but the journalist cartel has also redefined other words to the same effect. A century ago “liberal” meant “in accord with the thinking of Jim Robinson, now it means the same as journalism’s ersatz definition of “objective.” The same can be said about “progressive,” “moderate,” “centrist” - just about any political virtue you can name.
The only difference in the cartel-induced meaning of any of those words lies in their usage. “Objective” is to be applied, exclusively and always, to working journalists. Whereas any of the other virtue-signaling words can be applied to any non-journalist who goes along with and therefore gets along with the journalism cartel, but are never applied to any working journalist.
In sum, journalists are “liberals” in everything but name, and they are united by the “conspiracy” naturally flowing from the wire services. Given the tremendous difference in the cost of telegraphy bandwidth from the Nineteenth Century to the Internet Age, and the fact that the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890 after the founding of the first wire services, if the wire services didn’t exist you couldn’t get permission from the government to create them. They should be sued into oblivion.
Since journalists are “liberals” in everything but name, journalists never libel “liberals,” but they libel conservatives consistently and mercilessly. This means that the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision - which generally prevents government officials from suing for libel - actually prevents conservatives from suing for libel. Conservatives are forced to seek redress in the teeth of that unanimous Warren Court decision. Justice Scalia points the way:
Scalia argued his view on “textualism” was the ultimate defense of the First Amendment. In March 2012, an Associated Press report said he told an audience at Wesleyan University that the Court’s early justices would be “astonished that the notion of the Constitution changes to mean whatever each successive generation would like it to mean. … In fact, it would be not much use to have a First Amendment, for example, if the freedom of speech included only what some future generation wanted it to include. That would guarantee nothing at all.” That opinion didn’t prevent Scalia from harsh criticism of what is widely viewed as one of the essential court rulings protecting free speech and a free press — the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. At the Newseum in the Aspen Institute 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, Scalia said the landmark ruling meant “you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether it’s true or not. “Now the old libel law used to be (that) you’re responsible, you say something false that harms somebody’s reputation, we don’t care if it was told to you by nine bishops, you are liable,” Scalia said. “New York Times v. Sullivan just cast that aside because the Court thought in modern society, it’d be a good idea if the press could say a lot of stuff about public figures without having to worry. And that may be correct, that may be right, but if it was right it should have been adopted by the people. It should have been debated in the New York Legislature and the New York Legislature could have said, ‘Yes, we’re going to change our libel law.’” But in Times v. Sullivan, Scalia said the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, “… simply decided, ‘Yes, it used to be that … George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we don’t think that’s a good idea anymore.’”
JUSTICE SCALIA: THE 45 WORDS — AND ORIGINAL MEANING — OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT
Republicans should sue the journalism cartel for libel in direct defiance of Sullivan. It should be up to that cartel to prove that it actually is "a reliable source.” But evidence to the contrary abounds, and proving an absence of perspective - “bias” in their work is not a practical undertaking.
And it must not be forgotten that the federal government - the FCC - is involved in the journalism business, and should be told by SCOTUS to butt out. So the FCC should be a defendant in the lawsuit.