And that would stop the death threats and rape threats? Alex Jones followers would then leave you alone? I doubt it. These parents were not politicians or public figures. They simply happened to be the parents of children who were gunned down at school.
Alex Jones was not the innocent victim here, the parents were.
I agree with the need to protect political speech. This is newer than you might think - before New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), politicians regularly sued the media for libel, and it was hard to defend against these suits. But that's not what the Alex Jones lawsuits are about.
https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/the-end ... v-sullivan
But for private individuals the standards are different. See Curtis Publishing v Butts (1967) and Gertz vs. Robert Welch, Inc (1974).Before 1964, a person who sued for libel didn’t have to prove the statement in question was false; rather, falsity was presumed. The plaintiff didn’t have to show actual injury to their reputation, only that the statement had the potential to harm their reputation. Libel was judged under the rule of strict liability, meaning that a publisher was responsible for its statements regardless of the publisher’s intent or state of mind at the time of publishing. The only ways a publisher could defend itself were by proving that the statement fell into one of a few narrow categories of statements that were “privileged,” legally justified or excused, or more commonly, by proving the truth of the statement “in all its particulars.” (Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 267). Truth was a complete defense to libel, but as a practical matter, proving the truth of a statement “in all its particulars” was difficult even if the statement was true. Prior to 1964, the Supreme Court had said repeatedly that defamation law did not implicate the First Amendment. Defamatory speech had no redeeming social value, the Court said, and its regulation could be left wholly to the states.
Under these rules, publishing criticism—even truthful criticism—of public officials was a dangerous undertaking for a newspaper. Public officials routinely saddled their critics in the press with libel claims (claims that would today be considered meritless), often recovering considerable damage awards. Libel lawsuits against newspapers were a regular feature of American politics prior to the 1960s. Political officials and other powerful figures frequently harassed and intimidated their critics in the press through retaliatory libel suits.