People do not evaluate speech based on its truth, they evaluate it based on its authority, which is a function of many things (including, in eg twitters case, popularity). Fighting battles over whos speech should be afforded the biggest stage makes a huge difference in debate.
Yes, or if they write what a dictator says (eg Putin) then people read it and think "hmm the newspapers report that he said this, so it must be important, maybe it's true"
And in that way the dictators can fool the citizens in democratic countries via their own newspapers
