Westman - don't forget that the British government instituted a media blackout on carrying the voices of IRA members. This resulted in vido footage of the likes of Gerry Adams dubbed with an actor's voice repeating his words.
What did that achieve? B*gger all.
The problem is that if you try to censor someone's voice or block their views from being published, your own people tend to think you have something to hide. It worked well - for a while - in the Eastern Bloc but as soon as more and more people could listen to Western radio and have contact with Westerners so the decay and subsequent collapse of communism was expedited.
I'd argue that it's precisely because the voices of people like Gerry Adams etc were finally listened to and understood that we have arrived at the situation we're in today in terms of the ongoing peace process.
An awful lot of people in the world have a lot of bones to pick with the West - and at the moment, we are not listening to them. If we block those voices, then all that will happen is that both sides will demonise each other and grow further apart.
And that has to be bad news for us all.