the Swedes have a law where every act related to government (even local) must be public. There are few exceptions like defense and  medical records for example + investigation secrets from police and judges (to protect the presumption of innocence).

which means practically that any journalist can walk up to any public office and ask them to open their files and they cannot deny. Any file entering and leaving an admnistration must have a special number, according a special system. Both the computer/paper file must be archived at least 10 years. If a civil servant "loses" a file, they often get into trouble.

if somebody within a public (or private) office "leaks" information because he/she finds out that something illegal or immoral is happening, that person cannot be prosecuted. If the person remains anonymous which is often the case, it is forbidden in law to try to trace that person.

to go back to the original discussion : the rat game between people of power and journalists has always existed and of course is worse in a non-transparent system (thus the Nordic comparison). Of course there are media whores in France but sometimes I wonder if they get to the level of Judith Miller, not to talk about "creations" like Jeff Gannon. So talking about "vous" and "tu", organized receptions and legion of honors, not mentioning who is sleeping with who is only the top of the iceberg. If the journalist culture was more into investigation and real interrogation about what is really going on, the French media would be better. Whining about "look at the American freedom of press (???)" or the "BBC is best" won't help. When will French journalist organisations act for lawmaking "à la Swedish" ? I bet that 99% of them don't even know it exists.

that was my point and obviously irony isn't understood.