Tunisian and Egyptian transitions to democracy have witnessed contradictory paths. While Tunisian elites have largely succeeded in building a working, yet fragile governance beyond ideological and political divides, the process of democratization in Egypt failed to bring a consensual governance and ended in severe authoritarianism leading an unprecedented repression in the modern history of the country. In this article, we consider the media-politics nexus and its implications on powering or hindering the transformative process. In the democratic Tunisia, the media-politics nexus thrives within a complex system of clientelism forged on shifting alliances between politicians and business tycoons, including re-capture by agents of the former regime. In Egypt, a pluralistic, yet extremely polarized media landscape, had provided legitimacy for a military dictatorship through adopting extreme antagonistic forms, effectively exacerbating polarized conflicts. This article reflects on the notion of media instrumentalization and the political marketplace and how they contributed, in the case of Tunisia, to establish a new system of clientelism between media and politics, forged on confrontation but also adaptation, while they led, in the case of Egypt, to a complete erosion of the media and political diversity, media content is being completely dictated by the censors. The article is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with journalists and politicians conducted in various phases of the political transition in the two countries since the uprisings of 2011. In the two case studies, journalists – especially those in the elite circles- played an active political role in framing the political change and engaged in an ambivalent relationship with politics, with mixed outcome on the process of democratic change.