Just to be clear, I'm not saying "American is exceptional" in its press freedom. "American exceptionalism" is a concept (unrelated to press, I think it's origin is a political doctrine) that I'm referring to here. Strangely I think a lot of people here took that phrase "American exceptionalism" to mean US press is best in world. Could be a non-native English speaker thing, or could just be that the concept of AE is not that widely known (which if true, would be another sort of satire about AE, nice :)).