Only the tv and radio stations get licenses.
The "print" media...jurnolista's get "press passes"...ID's are issued by employers, freelancers can make their own and can be union or not, some are issued by event promotors/owners...anybody covering any crime/government stuff have to get passes from local/state government (proof of profession-articles etc varies), the higher you go the more you need, like agency affiliation...
Bottom line, this is largely a self-regulated industry with some nominal government approval...it is screaming for regulation, and why not? IMO the purveyors of false news and politcal-agenda-driven propaganda is more dangerous to all our other freedoms than anything the Left can invent in their head...the Founders said many times that this nation needed both a moral center (as envisioned it always would be given our heavily predominate Judeo-Christian population) and an educated populace (which even in the Founder's time people gathered to read the latest news) and that the press was part of that compact...together those two things combined with the people not being infringed one iota on their Second Amendment rights and the checks placed upon government authority are the pillars on which this nation was established. Time for those legs to be repaired. And central to that is taking measures both along the lines Ben suggests (that deal with after-effects of lies) and on the front end with restoring some integrity into an industry woefully lacking in any. The latter could be effected by: People (leaders in and out of government) being free to deny veracity-impaired journalist's from covering anything about their sphere of influence and stiff and immediate penalties for printing/broadcasting/disseminating material produced by a barred journalist.
Clearly something should and must be done.
I also think the reintroduction of dueling would help in this area too, like politicians...journalists firing off recklessly laying in the street bleeding out would have a positive effect in helping reign in the easy dissemination of lies.
But JF is right, no latter day politician has that kind of integrity to introduce anything along these lines and so we are back to tapping our fingers until The Great Reckoning commences.
Too bad. Oh well...
Still, I want markers placed wherever and however and any way they can...it will be so much more fun later when smiling and saying "I told you so", "We tried, you failed...stop yer' bitchin'!" and "Time for your medicine!".