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My take is that that is an important distinction. The (in)famous 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision intimidates Republican politicians from enforcing their (non-enumerated, but nevertheless clearly real) right to vindicate their reputations against libelous journalists. In that decision the Warren Court went into full self-congratulatory mode, declaring unanimously that they were enforcing the First Amendment, neither more nor less.
IMHO SCOTUS grossly overextended the reach of the facts before them. Those facts were that Mr. Sullivan objected in court to an advertisement published in the NYT. Mr. Sullivan was a Democrat - of the southern, racist variety then ubiquitous. The ad Mr. Sullivan objected to did not even explicitly name him. Nothing about the case brought into focus the then-even-more pervasive (basically unchallenged) "bias in the media.”
So SCOTUS blithely announced that judges can’t sue for libel, and politicians have a high hurdle to get any satisfaction from a libel suit. Since then it has become apparent that any racist politician would be named a (dis)honorary Republican (see Duke, David). And that Democrat politicians go along and get along - get along quite well, thank you - with journalists. And that that is easy for socialists to do, since journalism is homogeneously socialist-oriented. There is absolutely no reason to believe propaganda to the effect that journalism is, or ever was, objective. And every reason to believe that the wires services - constituting as they do continual virtual meetings of the major journalism outlets - behave precisely as Adam Smith " 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” projected in 1776.
A generation ago Clarence Thomas referred to his treatment at the hands of Senator Joe Biden et. al. as “a high-tech lynching.” And that was nothing compared with what Justice Kavanaugh went through, starting with a “witness” testifying to a “recovered” memory—and going downhill from there. And I thought “recovered” memory was as low as it got.
With that history behind us, anyone who thinks that Sullivan is a valid precedent to adhere to slavishly is beyond hope. Journalism is naturally negative about society, thus naturally disposed to support having government “do something” - and thus an engine of support for big government and even for outright socialism. To give a “right” to journalism to which it was never entitled is to subvert the Republic.