Press freedom is doing less well than people say in Western Europe, says Mathieu Bock-Coté. Some present it as the last bastion of liberal democracy in the face of the rise of authoritarian empires.
Everywhere the call to media order is imposed, in new forms, which range from societal repression to state repression, which in any case push to the development of self-censorship. The case of French-speaking Belgium could be of interest, as a political culture based on claimed censorship of what the media system calls the extreme right dominates. This is called the cordon santé.