It seemed like a good idea at the time. With plenty of interesting recent developments, I decided to write the lead piece for this week's in depth on defamation and privacy. Then stuff kept happening… well, it's certainly been fascinating but it's also been a fairly depressing spectacle as the debate about privacy, libel and free speech has been warped beyond all recognition by media hysteria.

For practitioners in the area the themes are already wearily familiar: claims about (often imaginary) superinjunctions, howls about "judge-made" privacy law and free speech that is forever being "chilled". The self-interested campaign surely reached its zenith with the nonsense about newspapers standing up for women's rights to sell sex stories on the basis that those trying to stop them are men – quite possibly the thinnest argument ever offered in the name of freedom of speech.

Neither has it been edifying to watch the media playing tag with the anonymous posters on Twitter to put the names out there of celebrities that tried to block shag 'n' tell stories; witness the rash of innuendo-heavy diary articles – an old trick on Fleet Street. It's a depressing contrast with the laudable way in which a community of bloggers last year teamed up with the media to advance the debate on libel reform. But there were so many gems to pick from – I particularly enjoyed the Sunday Times' laughably bitchy profile of Andrew Marr, which ran under the pithy headline: 'Old jug ears, daddy of the super-secret'.

This gloomy outlook was not my initial take when I started researching the area. For obvious professional reasons, I'm generally well disposed to the media and free speech and I've always had a rather jaded view of the judiciary, finding the courts rather too ready to protect confidentiality over the public interest. But on closer inspection the arguments advanced by much of the media just don't stand up, in particular with regard to privacy.

This is a shame because, of course, there are matters of real public importance being discussed. It seems apparent that the free speech lobby did succeed in concentrating senior judicial minds on the role of free speech. By the same token, The Guardian's Gill Phillips argues that until injunctions started attracting considerable attention, procedures for granting them were often rather too informal. This suggests there is a real need for robust scrutiny of the actions of the courts.

And the hectoring tone over free speech also obscures the fact that while the Defamation Bill takes some worthwhile steps to protect free speech, it has done very little to deal with the inequality of arms in libel. A more restrictive law will make it harder for the rich to bully writers and responsible journalists – but it will also make it that much harder for injured parties of limited means to get redress from an aggressive tabloid media that has proved unable to get its own house in order. With this level of debate, we're unlikely to do much better.