I do dislike the bad tempered posts and continuing personal sniping matches some people indulge in.
............
Free speech is tricky. As Fox News (and its even worse clones) demonstrates, when misused it can be extraordinarily damaging. Maybe there could be some variant of libel law which would penalise offences against truth, rather than against people.

One defence against the barrage of lies ought to be the professional dignity of journalists, who generally enter into the profession with some sense of wishing to deal in facts and truthtelling. What gets in the way of that is the imbalance of power in all kinds of media.