You can defame the useless, dishonest media. There needs to be journalistic reform in the worst way. Journalism died two decades ago, and there needs to be a new generation of honest reporters come forward (if there ever was such a thing).
Journalism died in the days of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. They smeared Ronald Reagan constantly. We had no answer at all. We had no media of our own. That was a lot longer than two decades ago.