This paper attempts to put European media freedom and pluralism into the context of European legislation and law-enforcement. It analyses how the European Convention on Human Rights can protect media freedom and pluralism, and whether and how the European Union has the obligation and the competence to do so. It argues that protecting media pluralism in Europe is an even more urgent need than reacting to individual violations of freedom of expression, because structural distortions to media markets have reached a level constituting a deficiency in European democratic processes. The legal insecurity around social network sites increases the extent of the crisis: which involves the failure of the media’s functioning as the watchdog of the governments.