Charlie Hebdo is not the only newspaper following these rules. Libération, for example had only one journalist that had received the Legion d'Honneur - and that was for a reporter wounded in a war zone.

These rules are basic deontology - do not become a client of the people one is reporting on. Or stop claiming the press is independant.

The Legion d'Honneur was specifically created to make sure the fonctionnaires would obey Napoleon - as a carrot.

Accepting to be entertained by politicians, to get on overly friendly terms with them, does end up making friends of journalists and politicians, even lovers. Friendship is certainly not independance.

This connivence between the aristocracy of French journalists and editorialists and politicians is a large part of the reason politicians rarely get hardball questions that are followed upon. One simply doesn't verbally assault a friend.

Indeed if Royal is getting such a rough treatment in the media, it might be because she didn't have the sort of friendships Sarkozy depends on, (with people like Elkabbach), or Strauss-Kahn or Fabius would have had.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères