I'm  not sure if the French media are any better in this regard than the American media. It's difficult to determine, however, because of the different nature of the two country's elites - the French ones are far less ideological.  There isn't the genuine ideological commitment to neo-liberal socio-economic policy, and in foreign affairs they're both less ideological (Bush I, not Bush II) and much more limited due to France having less power to get stuff done. Chirac and co. remind me a lot more of big city political machines writ large than the Cheney, DeLay, Norquist, AEI, et al. American right wing machine. They're in it for the perks, the power, and the money but not into anything more.

That said, Jerome has already pointed out that the French media is dominated by government infrastructure and defense contractors - the French equivalents of Bechtel and Lockheed Martin. I've also noticed a rather annoying lack of critical curiousity as to France's policies and actions in Africa - the one place where France does resemble the US imperialist model.

Furthermore the incestuousness of America's journalists and politicians is somewhat offset by the fact that the Republican political elites to a certain degree come from a different social milieu than the journalistic ones, the latter tend to emerge from the sort of big metro area bourgeoisie educated at elite institutions that resembles the French model. The latter are more liekly to be from geographically dispersed local business elites.