Over the past half century, the European Court of Human Rights and other core European institutions have progressively developed a set of basic principles to govern media law across the continent. Through key court decisions and treaty changes, these principles have also been constitutionalised across the divide between European economic and human rights law and knitted together through concepts of necessity and proportionality. As a consequence, the once singular European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) stands at the apex of a grand accumulation of European Union and Council of Europe instruments, which include not least the EU’s own Charter of Fundamental Rights. This body of law has moreover become familiar not just to European newspaper and broadcast editors, but also to online media providers based within and beyond Europe’s territorial boundaries.