Fortunately for most of us under most circumstances, the 1st Amendment comes close to being absolute. Unfortunately, this means there cannot be any mandatory legal requirement that people and organizations which represent themselves as journalists and news sources adhere to some minimal standard of ethics or even tell the truth at all. As long as they are not openly soliciting murders, knowingly promulgating false information that leads directly from their coverage to people being injured or killed, or libeling/slandering private citizens (a threshold Rush Limbaugh and his associate organizations stupidly crossed), there can be no real legal consequences for selling the most deranged, mendacious fiction as "news." Unless, of course, journalists willingly put themselves under oath, insure the factuality of statements with financial bonds, and use the penalties of deception as a selling point for their coverage. Could this be a viable mechanism for restoring reality in journalism, and at least create the option for real coverage?
While it is true there are several news organizations in existence which still practice actual journalism, finding them is often a long-term commitment since it's not always obvious which are institutionally serious and which are just not being propagandistic on a given day or a given topic. Even good organizations occasionally have bad days where something that doesn't rise to a reasonable standard slips through, so there is presently no hard, fast, and reliable way to know who is who at a glance. Once-venerable institutions have fallen into being sick jokes who operate as stenographers for proven liars, platforms for (overwhelmingly Republican) partisan propaganda, and promulgate myths and innuendos with impunity, but continue to be prominent due to the inertia of their fame. Meanwhile, relatively obscure but professionally well-regarded institutions produce quality work on an ongoing basis, but fail to be rewarded for it because of the long-term exposure needed to appeciate that quality.
There needs to be some instantly-recognizable statement about an organization and/or individual journalist that by its very definition sets apart real journalism from tabloid coverage and corporate propaganda - one that cannot be dodged, subverted, or diluted. In my view, journalists perform a function that is every bit as much a public trust as being a government employee, so why not attend news reports with sworn depositions attesting their factuality, relevant completeness, and whatever other, more detailed factors would add to its credibility? Why not have every person involved in the content of the story swear such depositions related to their role in it - i.e., management of the organization swears they did not interfere in the content in any way; interviewers swear to the complete factuality of their interviews; writers and editors swear to the factuality of the content to the best of their knowledge, and that they did not deceptively omit anything; etc.
These despositions would not actually be part of the story, but would be on file for anyone who wishes to access them, and the story could be labeled as Sworn Coverage. Journalists could call themselves Sworn Journalists. And news organizations could call themselves Sworn Newspapers, Sworn Programs (both radio and TV), Sworn News Wires, etc. When audiences would see that a story is Sworn Coverage, they would instantly know that the people involved have voluntarily assumed the potential criminal penalties of perjury on behalf of their work. It's basically saying to anyone who finds a story inconvenient, "I double-dog dare you to find something wrong with this!" And by thus empowering its enemies to hold them to a higher standard than the mere marketplace would require, an organization and its journalists signifies to the public that they are trustworthy, ethical, and dedicated to the truth.
"Sworn": It would be a one-word badge of quality that could not be bought or corrupted without corrupting the entire legal system, which is not as easy as it sounds no matter how great the resources devoted to it. Furthermore, even limited attempts to corrupt the system at the judicial level would be self-defeating because other Sworn news organizations could report on it, both because it's newsworthy and to protect the market value of their own badges as Sworn Journalists. Now, this does open some interesting potential dangers in the form of politicized prosecutors attempting to punish good journalism by tarnishing its reputation with baseless indictments, but that is actually a good thing in the long run: The entire Sworn Journalist pool could cover the story objectively, shining a light on a corrupt prosecutor, and once the case fell apart the reputation of Sworn Journalism would have increased rather than decreased, proving itself to have exposed and defeated official corruption.
Even if corruption ran in the other direction and a prosecutor refused to bring an organization or a journalist to account for lying under oath in Sworn Coverage, they could still be sued for it - not only by concerned citizens or nonprofit organizations, but by consumer protection agencies on both the state and/or federal level. False advertising lawsuits have been attempted against Fox News, but have to my knowledge failed to gain ground because the words it falsely attributes to itself (e.g., "news," "balanced," "fair") are nebulous or utterly subjective. The situation would be radically different with sworn legal documents attesting to factuality and lack of deliberate deception in content - any organization who comes remotely near to what Fox does would have its guts ripped out in court if they swore such documents. Especially in a civil court where the standard is far less than necessary to prove criminal perjury. With such a decision in hand, the stage could be set for subsequent criminal prosecution in other jurisdictions or by new prosecutors who aren't corrupt - not only for perjury, but for fraud.
As a voluntary measure, other so-called news organizations and their "journamalists" would be free to simply not engage in Sworn Coverage, or else only do so with stories they have no interest in perverting. But that fact would only shine a harsh spotlight on them and cause people to wonder why such a prominent, big-name institution is afraid of subjecting its content to the highest possible standards. If an organization only Swears out some of its coverage, people would ask why major news stories aren't Sworn, and there would be a stark contrast in quality and tone between the two types of stories that only further discredits the latter. Either way, credible journalism is given a prominent platform while propaganda and tabloid drivel is plainly highlighted as the dubious, shady content it is. Audiences would have clear, reliable lines drawn for them that could tell them at a glance what is and is not reputable.
Granted, Republicans and their tools are hardly afraid of committing perjury, but that's only because they're rarely put in a situation of testifying under oath, so they can afford the political cost of exercising their influence to escape the consequences. But if they were put in a situation where their propaganda must either lose effectiveness or else be put under oath, they would be persistently, regularly exposing themselves to perjury, and routinely creating opportunities for their opponents in both politics and society at large to hold them accountable.
I am not claiming that Sworn Coverage would or could eliminate bias entirely: Even rigorous work can sometimes push an agenda through the use of weasel-words, spending more time dwelling on one topic than another, and other unavoidable areas of editorial discretion. But those are the dilemmas of real journalism, and constitute the kind of "good problem" that it would be great to have again rather than being inundated with psychotic Bolshevik-level propaganda in the guise of American journalism. Once we can relegate abusive organizations and individuals to the same market as tabloids and create a hard, definitive, and easily identifiable line between them and real news sources, then we can worry about the quality standards within that ethical sandbox.
Which brings me to another measure that could be undertaken - Fact-bonding. Think of it like an insurance policy on the factuality of news coverage, or else like a bounty on errors, lies, or unsupported claims: If they say something that isn't true or isn't factually supported, then they forfeit the bond. Bond-holders would have a financial incentive to find violations, and people whose interests or opinions run contrary to the content would have an incentive to tip off the bond-holder if they can show any part of the content is counter-factual or unsupported. Thus news organizations could advertise themselves as "Fact-bonded," and perhaps individually advertise specific stories as being fact-bonded above and beyond the overall organization.
Fact-bonding is not as strong a measure as Sworn Coverage, because it could be diluted by conflicts of interest - e.g., a company could own its own bond-holder through various degrees of separation, or have major ownership and management overlap, or just be in collusion because they share a political agenda. They might also buy trivially-sized bonds that don't cost them nearly as much to lose as they make from deceiving people. However, serious organizations could advertise their credibility based on the amount of their fact bonds, the thoroughness of the standards by which they would forfeit, and the credibility and doggedness of their bond-holder. By doing this, a news outfit would directly tie its money to the quality of its coverage, rather than having the relationship be an indirect and nebulous one based on overall performance or brand recognition.
What this does is that it makes reality profitable for a news organization, and also creates opportunities for activists interested in media accountability to form bond-holder organizations. It monetizes the quality of facts rather than the quantity, which is what the internet has done, and thus reestablishes some market mechanism for maintaining real journalism. The value proposition would basically be that a news organization would get the credibility of having a bond from a bond-holder with a strong reputation of collecting, and the bond-holder would have a profit motive to enforce the value of that credibility by pouncing on violations. The net result is a much greater level of direct financial accountability for content, even with the bonding process somewhat corrupted and diluted by the shenanigans identified above.
Companies that advertise as fact-bonded when the bond-holder colludes with them to never collect could be subject to lawsuit by the general public or consumer protection actions, and/or their bond-holder would have no credibility and thus the bond-holder's seal on the organization's content would not add value to that content. There would be a market for such front operations, but the net result would be the same as mentioned above: Companies that show the seals of corrupt bond-holders or none at all would be relegated to tabloid status at a glance. Meanwhile, other bond-holders would develop reputations as dogged defenders of fact and be highly sought by organizations who want that credibility, creating a symbiotic relationship whereby both the news people and the bond-holder have a stake in enforcing the highest standards. Most bond-holders would be somewhere in between, and would find the most money with companies who are still lazy enough to have to pay up on a regular basis but just credible enough they still want to be taken seriously.
Once again, this creates a situation that does not exist right now: One where the credibility of information is a monetized service with direct financial incentives and penalties rather than something that has to be judged subjectively over months or years of contact with an organization's content. It would create an entirely new industry: The financial guarantee of media information. Yes, rich conservatives and corporations would find ways to game the system - that's just what they do - but that's just how evolution works in general: For every beneficial adaptation, parasites and predators adapt to find its weaknesses, driving still further adaptation. Meanwhile, news coverage would be improved in general, and the enemies of journalism would have to work harder and devote more resources to subverting it.
At the most extreme credibility attainable - though not necessarily practical - a company could have all of its content be Sworn Coverage, and fact-bonded for the entire value of the company to the most hardcore bond-holder on the market (e.g., one comprised entirely of journalism ethics professors). This would basically be a statement, visible at a glance, that all of the people and all of the money involved in a story have been put on the line to guarantee its quality. This probably wouldn't happen, but there are infinite gradations up to that point which could be pursued, and the very fact that they are even an option would by itself improve the quality of journalism. Credibility would once again become a marketable product in the news industry, and people who want to practice real journalism would once again have opportunities to be rewarded for doing so.