Criminalizing lies is dangerous, because the government can decide what it thinks are lies. If government wants to fight lies, money is better spent funding the spread of good information.
The US used to get this right by outlawing media consolidation and foreign ownership, then simply not having a domestic government-run propaganda outlet.
Of course, those rules were all repealed, and now we have things like Fox News which simultaneously violates all three of those rules (it isn’t government funded, but it is a de facto mouthpiece for the federal GOP). The left wing media has been playing catch up ever since.
At least there is one conservative conservative TV source left. I would feel very uncomfortable in a one-sided situation with no liberal or conservative news sources.
It's bad enough that only a few companies own basically every source already. One evening party's worth of people control what is basically the 'truth' in our nation.
