Having spent a number of years in Europe, this author provides a unique perspective on changes he has observed with European media. He suggests a dumbing-down of Europeans by establishment media much as we have witnessed here in the US.
Referring to parts of the European press as American stooges, he writes:
...for much of the last three decades, they constituted but one current among many other competing strains in the European press.
Since approximately 2004, however, their specific gravity within European opinion-making apparatus—as evidenced by the changes at El País and other similar “liberal” media outlets—has increased dramatically. Now simplistic American assumptions about who is bad and who is good once chuckled at on the continent, are the new normal in the editorial boards Europe’s “prestige press”.