Deliberate misinformation is hurting our democracy. We need truth-in-news-broadcast laws - including cable - as well as a "Chinese wall" between news and "entertainment" divisions, to protect our national discourse from willful poisoning by propagandists knowingly, deliberately and repeatedly broadcasting outright lies, knowing distortions, and counterfeit crises fomented by ping-ponging issues back and forth between "entertainment" and "news" segments to manufacture "buzz".
Actual news organizations have sacred responsibilities to democracy as well as rights derived from it,and no organization should be allowed to cloak itself as "news" if it knowingly foments disinformation. Escalating scale of penalties should allow for errors, but drive constant offenders off the air.