What happened to Alex Jones is not some new phenomenon, it is the status quo. There are tons of carve outs and exceptions in defamation law, particularly to protect journalists being sued for "getting it wrong." Amon other things, plaintiffs had to demonstrate that Jones acted with "actual malice", which essentially means that Jones either knew what he was saying was false or acted with deliberate disregard for the truth.
Despite that, he lost. He lost multiple times in multiple cases across multiple jurisdictions spanning a decade. He has appealed, and lost, multiple times. Multiple judges and multiple juries have found him liable for a litany of incidents of defamation. Hell, at one point he even lied under oath! Which, depending on the circumstances and the judgement of the prosecutor, could have turned into criminal charges!
And CNN and other news outlets DO get sued for defamation. The most famous such case would probably be Richard Jewell, a security guard who was falsely accused by news outlets of planting a pipe bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics. A more recent example would be Nicholas Sandmann, falsely accused of racist and aggressive actions at a demonstration.
Nothing is new about Alex Jones. You say "All that's needed is more sunlight, not more politically motivate lawfare". By your own words, you aren't calling for some return to the status quo, you are calling for a change. You think that existing defamation laws should be reformed, because without that you get totalitarianism. But then the burden is on you: if defamation laws are the road to totalitarianism, why haven't we slid into totalitarianism in the last few centuries?