Prevailing British government policy has been a major factor in the media treatment of paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, a conference in Dublin was told at the weekend.
A prominent Northern Ireland broadcaster said that when the official attitude changed during the peace process, media coverage also changed although it did not become uncritical.
In a paper on the approach of the Northern Ireland media to the Troubles, Ms Martina Purdy, a BBC political correspondent in Belfast, said that, until the republican and loyalist ceasefires in 1994, the British government officially treated paramilitaries as terrorists and criminals.
"They were a threat to the state and treated as such. The government tried a number of policies to stamp them out - including banning them and their political spokesmen from the airwaves.
"The government position changed however (in fact it later emerged that they were secretly talking to the IRA all along) with the ceasefires. The government's attitude softened, because the paramilitaries softened and, as a consequence, a new approach began to emerge that was reflected in the media."
Ms Purdy was addressing the 9th Cleraun Media Conference, organised by the Catholic lay organisation Opus Dei.
She said the Northern Ireland media had faced extraordinary challenges in the past 30 years but she rejected claims that the mainstream media were "soft" on paramilitaries.
"There was no tolerance for violence, and no mainstream newspaper or news organisation supported the violent activities of the loyalists or republicans. Every murder or major incident perpetrated by the paramilitaries, both loyalist and republican, was reported: bomb-damaged buildings, maimed bodies and grim funerals accompanied by disapproving headlines."
Newspaper editors "ran out of adjectives" to describe the horrors they observed.
Journalists and their organisations were threatened and intimidated by paramilitaries from both sides. Premises were attacked and, only last year, Sunday World reporter Martin O'Hagan was shot dead by loyalists.
With the development of the peace process, some anti-agreement politicians were now accusing the media of abandoning their critical faculties and becoming "soft" on paramilitaries. But the truth was more complex.
"What actually happened is that the situation changed. The paramilitaries changed their tactics, opting for a political rather than violent approach to the constitutional problem. Consequently, the political atmosphere was transformed and government policy - the agenda setters - began to adjust.
"Within a relatively short time-frame Sinn Féin went from being demonised to being deemed worthy of talks with officials, and eventually worthy of talks with a government minister." The loyalists, too, emerged from the shadows to hold talks with officials and ministers.
In a paper on media coverage of the courts, RTE's legal affairs correspondent Ms Mary Wilson said journalists were allowed to attend and report on rape cases under strict rules and the same should apply in family law cases.
She had never been in a family law court and there were important reasons why these cases were heard in private. "But we don't know what happens inside those courtrooms. We don't know how decisions are arrived at. What we do know, and what I know from people (mainly men) who approach me and write to me, is that there is a growing unhappiness and anger at the decisions being made in family courtrooms."
It was a matter of public interest to know how decisions on the custody of children or the division of property were arrived at, said Ms Wilson.