Their position is grounded in the olden days when most media was print media, there was a truly independent press and journalism was for truth not for clicks. Even then, lies outpaced the truth like a cheetah racing a tortoise.
The underlying premise of free speech absolutism is that good speech will always overcome bad speech. That wasn’t always the case (Remember the Maine!) but now it is willfully naive in the era of instant global mass communication.
When someone can anonymously assault someone they don’t like; when a brigade of bad actors can coordinate swatting or doxxing an innocent target; when a jerk in their parent’s basement can fake a scientific article and spread it globally through right wing media while it takes months to propagate refutation of the article, such that it alters public policy: there is no room for such unrestricted speech.
