Keep in mind, I’m not suggesting that the source would need to be named; I’m only suggesting that the data from the source would need to be able to be independently recollected from the same source.

In the example of a whistleblower, that would mean that the journalist would need to ensure that there was some secure anonymous route by which other journalists could get in contact with the same whistleblower to independently verify their story.

You wouldn't have done your job, as a journalist, until you had provided a reproducible way for someone else to come along and re-do your investigation without you, ending up with all the same facts, if not the same beliefs.

> Who gets to decide whether that particular conclusion is or not supported by the facts?

My proposal would be to separate journalism from editorial or opinionated conclusions. "The news" itself would only contain objectively-verifiable facts, without opinions; and then it would be the job of magazines, talk-shows, etc. to “interpret” the news, in much the same way the current news media itself currently interprets things like scientific papers.

In other words, “news” intended for the public would be trimmed down to the most boring and dry possible version of itself—like a cross between a wire service and a police scanner. Anything that wasn’t such, couldn’t legally be called “news”, nor could it suggest by its formatting that it is news. There would be a separation between "news" and "opinion" in about the same way there is an FDA-managed separation between "food" and "drugs"; and there would be public-awareness campaigns to make it clear that this division exists, and that any fact found in "opinion" sources that you haven't independently heard from a "news" source is suspect at best and more likely an active psy-op.

But, again, the state wouldn't be responsible for declaring who can or cannot publish (just like the FDA isn't responsible for saying who can or cannot manufacture drugs; and the SEC isn't responsible for saying who can or cannot sell equity.) The only job of this hypothetical MiniTruth would be to say—according to a very objective, independently calculable bar, determined by Congress—whether what a given party is publishing can legally be called "news" or not; and to punish parties that do call their publications "news" if they have not met the requirements to do so.

(Of course, there's no such thing as an unbiased source. The curated set of facts that end up put together into a news article is itself an editorial choice. But we already have a news media that generates every possible combination of such facts, so that bias, at least, sort of "evens out.")